Yea, my Christian brethren, carving knives and
pitchforks right down on the top of their brown mistresses, who are
thereby invariably bruised like the clown in the pantomime--at least as
I am told he is, for I never go to such profane Places--oh, no!--bruised
as flat as pancakes, and generally murdered outright on the spot. Last
of all the landlord gets up, and kicks the miserable butler himself down
after his mates, into the very heart of the living mass; and this not
once and away, but every day in the week, Sundays not excepted. Oh, my
dear, dear hearers, can you can you, with your fleshy hearts thumping
and bumping against your small ribs, forget the black butler, and the
mulatto concubines, and the pitchforks, and the iron ladles full of
molten lead? My feelings overpower me, I must conclude. Go in peace,
and ponder these things in your hearts, and pay your sixpences at the
doors.--Exeunt omnes, piping their eyes, and blowing their noses."
Our shouts of laughter interrupted our friend, who never moved a muscle.
Again, where old Crowfoot asks his steward--"How does the privateer
lay?"
"There again now," said Aaron, with an irritable grin,--"why, Tom, your
style is most pestilent--you lay here and you lay there--are you sure
that you are not a hen, Tom?"
One more touch at Massa Aaron, and I have done. After coming to the
description of the horrible carnage that the fire from the Transport
caused on the privateer's deck before she sheered off, I remarked "I
never recall that early and dismal scene to my recollection,--the awful
havoc created on the schooner's deck by our fire, the struggling, and
crawling, and wriggling of the dark mass of wounded men, as they
endeavoured, fruitlessly, to shelter themselves from our guns, even
behind the dead bodies of their slain shipmates--without conjuring up a
very fearful and harrowing image.
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