still while all other things
have been moving.

One of the most comical spectacles I have ever seen in my life was
"church," with a heavy sea on, in the saloon of the Cunard steamer
coming out. The officiating minister, an extremely modest young man, was
brought in between two big stewards, exactly as if he were coming up to
the scratch in a prize-fight. The ship was rolling and pitching so, that
the two big stewards had to stop and watch their opportunity of making a
dart at the reading-desk with their reverend charge, during which pause
he held on, now by one steward and now by the other, with the feeblest
expression of countenance and no legs whatever. At length they made a
dart at the wrong moment, and one steward was immediately beheld alone
in the extreme perspective, while the other and the reverend gentleman
_held on by the mast_ in the middle of the saloon--which the latter
embraced with both arms, as if it were his wife. All this time the
congregation was breaking up into sects and sliding away; every sect (as
in nature) pounding the other sect. And when at last the reverend
gentleman had been tumbled into his place, the desk (a loose one, put
upon the dining-table) deserted from the church bodily, and went over to
the purser. The scene was so extraordinarily ridiculous, and was made so
much more so by the exemplary gravity of all concerned in it, that I was
obliged to leave before the service began.

This is one of the places where Butler carried it with so high a hand in
the war, and where the ladies used to spit when they passed a Northern
soldier. It still wears, I fancy, a look of sullen remembrance. (The
ladies are remarkably handsome, with an Eastern look upon them, dress
with a strong sense of colour, and make a brilliant audience.) The ghost
of slavery haunts the houses; and the old, untidy, incapable, lounging,
shambling black serves you as a free man. Free of course he ought to be;
but the stupendous absurdity of making him a voter glares out of every
roll of his eye, stretch of his mouth, and bump of his head. I have a
strong impression that the race must fade out of the States very fast.
It never can hold its own against a striving, restless, shifty people.
In the penitentiary here, the other day, in a room full of all blacks
(too dull to be taught any of the work in hand), was one young brooding
fellow, very like a black rhinoceros. He sat glowering at life, as if it
were just endurable at dinne