some singing, some dancing, and others chatting quietly together, but
all enjoying themselves as heartily as so many young animals let loose
in a pasture. They saluted the Colonel and me respectfully, but each one
had a free, good-natured word for "Massa Tommy," who seemed an especial
favorite with them. The lad took their greetings in good part, but
preserved an easy, unconscious dignity of manner that plainly showed he
did not know that _he_ too was of their despised, degraded race.

The Colonel, in a rapid way, gave me the character and peculiarities of
nearly every one we met. The titles of some of them amused me greatly.
At every step we encountered individuals whose names have become
household words in every civilized country.[F] Julius Caesar, slightly
stouter than when he swam the Tiber, and somewhat tanned from long
exposure to a Southern sun, was seated on a wood-pile, quietly smoking a
pipe; while near him, Washington, divested of regimentals, and clad in a
modest suit of reddish-gray, his thin locks frosted by time, and his
fleshless visage showing great age, was gazing, in rapt admiration, at a
group of dancers in front of old Lucy's cabin.

In this group about thirty men and women were making the ground quake
and the woods ring with their unrestrained jollity. Marc Antony was
rattling away at the bones, Nero fiddling as if Rome were burning, and
Hannibal clawing at a banjo as if the fate of Carthage hung on its
strings. Napoleon, as young and as lean as when he mounted the bridge of
Lodi, with the battle-smoke still on his face, was moving his legs even
faster than in the Russian retreat; and Wesley was using his heels in a
way that showed _they_ didn't belong to the Methodist church. But the
central figures of the group were Cato and Victoria. The lady had a face
like a thunder-cloud, and a form that, if whitewashed, would have
outsold the "Greek Slave." She was built on springs, and "floated in the
dance" like a feather in a high wind. Cato's mouth was like an
alligator's, but when it opened, it issued notes that would draw the
specie even in this time of general suspension. As we approached he was
singing a song, but he paused on perceiving us, when the Colonel,
tossing a handful of coin among them, called out, "Go on, boys; let the
gentleman have some music; and you, Vic, show your heels like a beauty."

A general scramble followed, in which "Vic's" sense of decorum forbade
her to join, and she cons