'That's so,' assented the lazy gentleman, nodding. 'You Englishmen and Yankees—excuse me for coupling you together!—know very little of negro character; and, because the darkies have a habit of indulging in unmeaning laughter on all occasions, you think them the best-tempered people in existence. In reality their tempers are often execrable—infernal!' And he compacently blew a ring of tobacco-smoke into the mild, humid morning. The clergyman looked on assentingly.

'They can never be trusted with any responsibility involving the exercise of authority without abusing it. They ill use animals on all occasions—treat them with positive brutality, and sometimes whip their children so unmercifully that we have to interfere. I don't know what would become of them without us, I'm sure!'

'What do you think of their religious convictions?' I asked of the clergyman, when the speaker had arrived at his comfortable, characteristically Southern conclusion.

'Our best negroes are unquestionably pious,' he answered; 'and some of them have a very earnest sense of their duties as to this life and the next; but I regret to say that a good deal of what passes for religion among them is mere exitement, often of a mischievous and sensual character.'

'Heathenish! quite heathenish!' added the lazy gentleman. 'Did you ever see a shout, Mr. ——?'

I responded in the negative, and inquired what it was.

'Oh, a dance of negro men and women to the accompaniment of their own voices. It's of no particular figure, and they sing to no particular tune, improvising both at pleasure, and keeping it up for an hour together. I'll defy you to look at it without thinking of Ashantee or Dahomey; it's so suggestive of aboriginal Africa.'

I had an opportunity, subsequently, of witnessing the performance in question, and can indorse the lazy gentleman's assertion. Inheriting the saltatory traditions of their barbarous ancestry, the slaves have also a current fund of superstition, of a simple and curious character. But further ethical disquisitions were here cut short by the appearance of the Colonel's daughters, when the conversation was at once changed, as by tacit consent of all three of us. What their father had told me, relative to his solicitude to keep them in ignorance of all 'unpleasant things' accruing from the fundamental institution, was in perfect accordance with Southern instincts. I had observed similar instances of habitual caution before, reminding me of the eulogized tendency toward 'Orientalism' alluded to in the previous chapter. And, of all people, South-Carolinians possess the equally rare and admirable faculty of holding their tongues, when there is occasion for it.

We joined the ladies in a walk. As the elder had much to say to the clergyman about mutual acquaintances, while her fat relative strolled carelessly by her side, her sister naturally fell to my companionship. With a rather handsome and intelligent girl I should have preferred to converse on general topics than the one with which I had been already nauseated at Charleston—secession; but she was full of it, and would not be evaded. Very soon she asked me what I supposed would be the sentiment in England toward the seceding States, in the assumed event of their forming a confederacy.

I told her, as I then believed, that it would be adverse, in consequence of the national hostility to slavery, appealing to her own British experience for confirmation.