Border and Bastille | Page 9

near, and for a second or two I could not get rid of a horrible fascination, compelling me to stare. I say "dark man" advisedly, for it would have been hard to guess at his original color, unless his cast of feature had not given a line. Now, I have seen Irish squatters in their cabins, London outcasts in their penny lodgings, and beggars of Southern Europe in their nameless dens; but the conviction flashed upon me (and it has never since passed away), that I was then gazing on a dirtier specimen of healthy humanity than I had ever yet foregathered with. I believe that all the rains of heaven beating on his brow would not have altered its dinginess by a shade, nor penetrated one of the earthy layers that had thickened there; a thunder-shower must have glanced off, as water will do from tough, hardened clay. Rough patches of hair, scanty and straggling, like the vegetation of waste, barren lands, grew all over his cheeks and chin (a negro with an ample, honest beard is an anomaly), and a huge bush of wool--unkempt, I dare swear, from earliest infancy--seemed to repel the ruins of a nondescript hat. Whether he was really uglier than his fellows I cannot remember--I was so absorbed in contemplating and realizing his surpassing squalor--but the expression of the uncouth face (if it had any whatsoever) was, I think, neither ferocious nor sullen. There is generally a "colored car" attached to every train; for you will find the tender-hearted Abolitionist, in despite of his African sympathies, when it is a question of personal contact or association, quite as earnest in keeping those "innocent blacknesses" aloof, as the haughtiest Southerner. On the present occasion there was no such distinction of races. I do not think the contraband was conscious of the effect produced by his lordly presence; it was probably simple accident which brought him so often in my neighborhood; but, wherever I moved through the crowded cars, seeking for a seat, the loose shambling limbs and dull vacant eyes seemed impelled to follow. At last I lost my bete noire, and found a place close to the door with nothing but a low pile of logs in my front. I was tired, and soon began to doze; but I woke up with a start and a shudder, as a haunted man might do, becoming aware, in sleep, of the approach of some horrible thing. There he sat, on the logs close to my feet, in a heavy stertorous slumber, his huge head rocking to and fro, and his features hideously contorted, as he growled and gibbered to himself in an unknown tongue, like some dreaming Caliban. I arose and fled away swiftly from the face of my "brother," and, finding no other available resting-place, did battle on the outside platform with the keen night wind.
I am indebted, however, to that honest contraband for a curious sight, which I should have otherwise missed--the crossing of the Gunpowder River. There, the train rushes, on a single track, over three-quarters of a mile of tremulous trestle-work, without an apology for a side-rail, so that you look straight down into the dark water, over which you seem wafted with no visible support beneath. The effect is sufficiently startling, especially seen as I saw it, under a bright, capricious moon. From Baltimore, the cars were less crowded, and I encountered my dusky tormentor no more.
If there is much in first impressions, I was not likely to be enchanted with Washington.
The snow, just then beginning to melt, lay inches deep on the half-frozen soil; everything looked unnaturally and unutterably dreary in the bleak leaden dawn-light; and, as I drove down Pennsylvania avenue (after rejection at the lodgings to which I had been recommended), the first object that caught my eye was a huge placard:
EMBALMING OF THE DEAD.
These ghastly advertisements are not unfrequent in that part of the city, and I was informed that the advertisers occasionally do a very brisk business.
After waiting for two hours in the hall of the Metropolitan, like a client in some patrician antechamber, they did accord me a tolerable room on the sublimest story.
I called that same afternoon on Lord Lyons, to whom I brought an introductory letter. I have to thank the British Legation for much courteous kindness, and for two very pleasant evenings, on the first of which I was the guest of the chief, on the second, of his secretaries. Here will (if I ever leave it behind me) begin and end my agreeable reminiscences of Washington. I disliked it cordially at first sight; I was thoroughly bored before I had got through my stay of seventy hours; I utterly abominate and execrate the city
From turret to foundation-stone,
at this moment, as I