Border and Bastille | Page 9

and the abomination
of expectoration less carefully dissembled. Besides this, I was afflicted
by another nuisance, purely private and personal.
Whether there be any such thing as love at first sight or no, is a
question--grave or gay, as you choose to discuss it--but, that instinctive
antipathies exist, is most certain. I was the victim of one of such that
night. Waiting for change in the ticket-office, my eye lighted on a dark

man, of African appearance, standing unpleasantly 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