oes.' 'Den,'
says Mars Milburn, 'I needn't say to ye, P'ofessor Buzzard, dat dis
little bell will be very pleasin' to yo' refine taste.' Wid dat he takes
a little piece o' wire an' fastens de tea-bell to de bird's foot an'
says, 'Buzzard, let me hear ye play!' De buzzard flew and de bell
tinkled, an' all de other buzzards hear some'in' like de cowbell on de
dead cow dey picked yisterday, an' dey says, 'Who's dat a flyin' heah?
Maybe it's a cow's ghose!' So dey up, all scart, an' cross'd de bay; an'
de buzzard wid a bell haint had no company sence, becoz he stole a
talent he didn't have, and it made everybody oncomfitable."

"I've heard about Meshach belling a buzzard," said Roxy, "but they say
he's got something on his foot, too, like a hoof--a clove foot. Did you
ever see it, Samson?"

"He never tuk his foot off," said the negro, warily, "to let me see it.
Dat bell on de buzzard, gals, is like white beauty in a colored skin; it
draws white men and black men, like quare music in de air, but it makes
de pale gal lonesome. She can't marry ary white man; she despises black
ones."

The shrewd lover had touched a chord of young pain in the hearts of both
those delicate quadroons. Both were so nearly white that the slight
corruption increased their beauty, rounded their graceful limbs,
plumpened their willowy figures, gave a softness like mild night to
their expressive eyes, and blackened the silken tassels of their elegant
long hair. No tutor had taught them how to walk,--they who moved on
health like skylarks on the air. Faithful, pure-minded, modest, natural,
they were still slaves, and their place in matrimony, which nature
would have set among the worthiest--superior in love, superior in
maternity, superior in length of days and enjoyment--was, by the freak
of man's _caste_, as doubtful as the mermaid's.

Roxy was a little the shorter and fuller of shape, the milder and more
pathetic; in Virgie the white race had left its leaner lines and greater
unrelenting. She said to Samson, with the pique her reflections
inspired,

"I never thought the first man to make love to me would be as black as
you."

"De white corn years," says Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird
gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller
wouldn't suit you, Virgie."

"Why?" says Roxy, "Virgie was raised among white children; so was I. We
didn't know any difference till we grew up."

"Dat was what spiled ye," Sams