a
sort of sickly, sour smell pervades the room, that makes one hate the
thought, either of dinner, or of the poor niggers themselves. It seems
it is inherent in their skin; to my surprise and satisfaction, however,
we found nothing of the kind in this room, the windows of which had been
well opened beforehand. It was a large, whitewashed apartment, half
filled with blacks.

We were the only whites present; there were benches across the room,
leaving a passage up the middle, the men and women occupying different
sides. A pulpit was at the further end of the room, and in front of it
stood a black preaching. He was in the middle of his sermon when we came
in, so we did not hear the text, and sat down quietly at some distance
from him, so as to be able to get out and go home to poor papa whenever
we wished; a nigger came forward, and invited us to go further up the
room, which we declined. The sermon went on for some time; it described
the happiness felt by God's true children: and how they would cling to
each other in persecution. The preacher encouraged them all in the path
of holiness, and explained the Gospel means of salvation with great
clearness, and really with admirably chosen words; there was a little
action but not too much; and there were no vulgarities. The discourse
was at least equal to the sermons of many of our dissenting ministers,
and appeared to come from the lips of an educated gentleman, although
with a black skin. He finished, and an old negro rose, and gave out the
text:--"And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain," &c. His
voice at first was faint, and I could not hear what were the various
jokes he cut which produced loud laughter, so we advanced a little. He
afterwards became more serious. His address was quite distinct from his
text, being an earnest and very well delivered exhortation to the
converted to grow in grace; at the end of every period he repeated his
text as a _refrain_.

At first, I observed among the dark ladies a few suppressed murmurs of
approbation, but as his discourse proceeded, these were turned into
groans; and when he quoted a text, or said anything more than usually
impressive, there was a regular rocking and swaying of the figure among
them, while one or two repeated aloud the last words of his text. While
he was preaching, a tall thin young woman, in deep mourning, came in,
and room was made for her to sit down next to a very fat negress, whom I
had observed