"Won't you give me a kiss?" said Henry to the same little girl one night.
"No, I won't, with all that blue stuff on your face." (He was made up for Mephistopheles.) Then, after a pause, "But why—why don't you take it!" She was only five years old at the time!
Discovering the Southern Darkey
For quite a while during the first tour I stayed in Washington with my friend, Miss Olive Seward, and all the servants of that delightful household were coloured. This was my first introduction to the negroes, whose presence in the country makes America seem more foreign than anything to European eyes. They are more sharply divided into high and low types than white people, and are not in the least alike in their types. It is safe to call any coloured man "George." They all love it, perhaps because of George Washington; and most of them are really named George. I never met with such perfect service as they can give. Some of them are delightful. The beautiful, full voice of the "darkey" is so attractive—so soothing, and they are so deft and gentle. Some of the women are beautiful, and all the young appeared to me to be well-formed. As for the babies! I washed two or three little piccaninnies when I was in the South, and the way they rolled their gorgeous eyes at me was "too cute," which means, in British-English, "fascinating."
At the Washington house, the servants danced a cake-walk for me—the coloured cook, a magnificent type, who "took the cake," saying, "That was because I chose a good handsome boy to dance with, Missie." They sang, too. Their voices were beautiful—with such illimitable power, yet as sweet as treacle.
The little page boy had a pet of a woolly head—Henry once gave him a tip, a "fee," in American-English, and said: "There, that's for a new wig when this one is worn out," gently pulling the astrakhan-like hair. The tip would have bought him many wigs, I think!
"Why, Uncle Tom, how your face shines to-night!" said my hostess to one of the very old servants.
"Yes, Missie, glycerine and rose-water, Missie!"
He had taken some from her dressing-table to shine up his face in honour of me! A shiny complexion is considered to be a great beauty among the blacks. The dear old man! He was very bent and very old; and looked like one of the logs that he used to bring in for the fire—a log from some hoary, lichened tree whose life was long since past. He would produce pins from his head when you wanted one; he had them stuck in his pad of white woolly hair. "Always handy then, Missie," he would say.
"Ask them to sing 'Sweet Violets,' Uncle Tom."