increased
vigor, and strike into the shout step, observing most accurate time with
the music. This step is something halfway between a shuffle and a dance,
as difficult for an uninitiated person to describe as to imitate. At the
end of each stanza of the song the dancers stop short with a slight
stamp on the last note, and then, putting the other foot forward,
proceed through the next verse. They will often dance to the same song
for twenty or thirty minutes, once or twice, perhaps, varying the
monotony of their movement by walking for a little while and joining in
the singing. The physical exertion, which is really very great, as the
dance calls into play nearly every muscle of the body, seems never to
weary them in the least, and they frequently keep up a shout for hours,
resting only for brief intervals between the different songs. Yet, in
trying to imitate them, I was completely tired out in a very short time.
The children are the best dancers, and are allowed by their parents to
have a shout at any time, though, with the adults, the shout always
follows a religious meeting, and none but church members are expected to
join. It is to one of these shouts of the negro children that Mr.
Russell alludes in his Diary when describing a visit which he paid to a
plantation near Charleston in April, 1861. He speaks of the children as
a set of 'ragged, dirty, and shoeless urchins, who came in shyly,
oftentimes running away till they were chased and captured, dressed into
line with much difficulty, and, then, shuffling their flat feet,
clapping their hands, and drawling out in a monotonous sort of chant
something about the 'River Jawdam.'' Such a sketch conveys no idea of
the shout as it may be witnessed to-day on any of the plantations among
the Sea Islands. You will find the children clean, and, in general,
neatly dressed, coming into the room when asked by the superintendent,
rendering their impressive and oftentimes pleasing melodies in a manner
seldom surpassed in our schools at the North, while their 'shouting'
reveals a suppleness of limb and peculiar grace of motion beyond the
power of our dancing masters to impart.

There are many features of the negro shout which amuse us from their
strangeness; some, also, that strike the observer as wholly absurd. Yet,
viewed as a religious exercise--and in this light it is always
considered by the older negroes--I cannot help regarding it, in spite of
many of its characteristics, a