uld soon paralyze usefulness of hand, if the
blessed gift of smiles had been denied us.

In an hour I took possession of my new charge, finding a
dissipated-looking boy of nineteen or twenty raving in the solitary
little room, with no one near him but the contraband in the room
adjoining. Feeling decidedly more interest in the black man than in the
white, yet remembering the Doctor's hint of his being "high and
haughty," I glanced furtively at him as I scattered chloride of lime
about the room to purify the air, and settled matters to suit myself. I
had seen many contrabands, but never one so attractive as this. All
colored men are called "boys," even if their heads are white; this boy
was five-and-twenty at least, strong-limbed and manly, and had the look
of one who never had been cowed by abuse or worn with oppressive labor.
He sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper
anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his
attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat, with a hand on either
knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some
absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door
stood wide open and my movements were by no means noiseless. His face
was half averted, but I instantly approved the Doctor's taste, for the
profile which I saw possessed all the attributes of comeliness belonging
to his mixed race. He was more quadroon than mulatto, with Saxon
features, Spanish complexion darkened by exposure, color in lips and
cheek, waving hair, and an eye full of the passionate melancholy which
in such men always seems to utter a mute protest against the broken law
that doomed them at their birth. What could he be thinking of? The sick
boy cursed and raved, I rustled to and fro, steps passed the door, bells
rang, and the steady rumble of army-wagons came up from the street,
still he never stirred. I had seen colored people in what they call "the
black sulks," when, for days, they neither smiled nor spoke, and
scarcely ate. But this was something more than that; for the man was not
dully brooding over some small grievance; he seemed to see an
all-absorbing fact or fancy recorded on the wall, which was a blank to
me. I wondered if it were some deep wrong or sorrow, kept alive by
memory and impotent regret; if he mourned for the dead master to whom he
had been faithful to the end; or if the liberty now his were robbed of
half its sweetness by t