_dum_, _patter_, _dum_!

"Do not hurry away! Come again and see us. I think the Coopers are all
out in Ohio."

_Dum_, _dum_, _dum_, _patter_, _dum_!

The cold wind and slight rain seemed refreshing and even welcome, as I
went out into the cold air. The captain showed me his stock of fourteen
horses and mules, and we interchanged views as to the best method of
managing certain maladies in such stock. I had been most kindly
entertained; indeed, with the home kindliness which good people in the
country show to some hitherto unseen and unknown relative who descends to
them from the great world of the city. Not but that my friends did not
know cities and men as well as Ulysses, but even Ulysses sometimes met
with a marvel. In after days I became quite familiar with the several
families who made the camp, and visited them in sunshine. But they
always occur to me in memory as in a deep Rembrandt picture, a wonderful
picture, and their voices as in vocal chiaroscuro; singing to the wind
without and the rain on the tent,--

_Dum_, _dum_, _dum_, _patter_, _dum_!

IV. HOUSE GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA

This chapter was written by my niece through marriage, Miss Elizabeth
Robins. It is a part of an article which was published in "The Century,"
and it sets forth certain wanderings in seeking old houses in the city of
Philadelphia.

All along the lower part of Race Street, saith the lady, are wholesale
stores and warehouses of every description. Some carts belonging to one
of them had just been unloaded. The stevedores who do this--all
negroes--were resting while they waited for the next load. They were
great powerful men, selected for their strength, and were of many hues,
from _cafe au lait_, or coffee much milked, up to the browned or
black-scorched berry itself, while the very _athletae_ were coal-black.
They wore blue overalls, and on their heads they had thrown old
coffee-bags, which, resting on their foreheads, passed behind their ears
and hung loosely down their backs. It was in fact the _haik_ or
bag-cloak of the East, and it made a wonderfully effective Arab costume.
One of them was half leaning, half sitting, on a pile of bags; his
Herculean arms were folded, and he had unconsciously assumed an air of
dignity and defiance. He might have passed for an African chief. When
we see such men in Egypt or other sunny countries _outre mer_, we become
artistically eloquent; but it rarely occurs to sketchers