ool, a Southern friend kindly
volunteered to accompany them.

The visitors were naturally much impressed by what they learned from
their courteous hosts, and felt inclined to sympathize with the Southern
people, for the negro is not counted as a Southerner, except to fix the
basis of congressional representation. There might of course be things
to criticise here and there, certain customs for which they did not
exactly see the necessity, and which seemed in conflict with the highest
ideals of liberty but surely these courteous, soft-spoken ladies and
gentlemen, entirely familiar with local conditions, who descanted so
earnestly and at times pathetically upon the grave problems confronting
them, must know more about it than people in the distant North, without
their means of information. The negroes who waited on them at the hotel
seemed happy enough, and the teachers whom they had met at the mission
school had been well-dressed, well-mannered, and apparently content with
their position in life. Surely a people who made no complaints could not
be very much oppressed.

In order to give the visitors, ere they left Wellington, a pleasing
impression of Southern customs, and particularly of the joyous,
happy-go-lucky disposition of the Southern darky and his entire
contentment with existing conditions, it was decided by the hotel
management to treat them, on the last night of their visit, to a little
diversion, in the shape of a genuine negro cakewalk.

On the afternoon of this same day Tom Delamere strolled into the hotel,
and soon gravitated to the bar, where he was a frequent visitor. Young
men of leisure spent much of their time around the hotel, and no small
part of it in the bar. Delamere had been to the club, but had avoided
the card-room. Time hanging heavy on his hands, he had sought the hotel
in the hope that some form of distraction might present itself.

"Have you heard the latest, Mr. Delamere?" asked the bartender, as he
mixed a cocktail for his customer.

"No, Billy; what is it?"

"There's to be a big cakewalk upstairs to-night. The No'the'n gentlemen
an' ladies who are down here to see about the new cotton fact'ry want to
study the nigger some more, and the boss has got up a cakewalk for 'em,
'mongst the waiters and chambermaids, with a little outside talent."

"Is it to be public?" asked Delamere.

"Oh, no, not generally, but friends of the house won't be barred out.
The clerk 'll fix it for you. Ran