The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 17
We were driven into the prison-yard, through a stout gate well studded with iron nails. "The heavy padlocks of the prison-door were unfastened, and we were thrust in, without further ceremony. A faint glimmer of moon-light stole in at the narrow and grated windows of the prison; but it was some time before I was able to distinguish one object from another. When at length, my eyes had accommodated themselves to the faintness of the light, I found myself crowded into the midst of perhaps a hundred human beings, — most of them young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, — closely packed on the bare floor.
A considerable number started up at our entrance, and began to crowd about us, and to inquire who we were, and whence we came. They seemed glad of anything to break the monotony of their confinement. But wearied and fatigued, we were in no humor for talking; and sinking down upon the floor of our prison, notwithstanding the poisonous stench, and the confined and impure atmosphere, we were soon buried in profound slumbers. Sleep is the dearest solace of the wretched; and there is this sweet touch of mercy in it, that it ever closes the eyes of the oppressed, more willingly than those of the oppressor. I hardly think that any member of the firm of Savage, Brothers & Co slept so soundly that night, as did the most unquiet of their newly purchased victims.
Day came — the prison-door was unlocked, and we were let out into the enclosure about it. The scanty allowance of corn-bread which the penuriousness of our wealthy but economical masters allowed us, was doled out to each. My meal finished, I sat down upon the ground, and observed the scene about me. With a few exceptions, the prisoners were collected in groups, some containing two or three, and others a much larger number. The men were more numerous than the women, though the females had received a considerable addition from our party. The acquaintance of these new comers was eagerly sought for, and they were constantly receiving solicitations to enter into temporary unions, to last while the parties remained together. Most of the women whom we found in the prison, had already formed connections of this sort.
These courtships, if so they should be called, were still going on, when a tall young fellow, with a very quizical face, produced a three-stringed fiddle, and after preluding for a few moments, struck up a lively tune. The sound of the music soon drew a large group about him, who provided themselves with partners and began a dance. As the fiddler warmed to his business, he played faster and faster; and the dancers, amidst laughs and shouts and boisterous merriment, did their best to keep up with the tune.
It is thus that men, whenever their natural sources of enjoyment fail them, betake themselves to artificial excitements. Too often, we sing and dance, not because we are merry, but in the hope to become so; and merriment itself is seldomer the expression and the evidence of pleasure, than the disguise of weariness and pain, — the hollow echo of an aching heart. But the entire company did not join the dancers. As it happened, it was Sunday; and a part of them seemed to entertain conscientious scruples about dancing on that, and for aught I know, upon any other day. The more sober part of the company gradually collected together in the opposite corner of the prison-yard; and a sedate young man, with a handsome and intelligent face, mounted upon the head of an empty barrel which happened to be standing there, and taking a hymn-book from his pocket, struck up a Methodist psalm. His voice was sweet and clear, and his singing far from disagreeable. He was soon joined by several others; and as the chorus swelled, the sound of the psalmody almost drowned the scraping of the fiddle and the laughter of the dancers. I observed too, that several of the dancing party, cast their eyes, from time to time wistfully towards the singers; and before the psalm was half finished, several of the females had stolen softly away, and mingled in the group collected about the preacher. The singing being ended, he began to pray. His hands were clasped, and raised, and he spoke with a ready fluency, and a natural earnestness and unction, not always heard from a regular clergyman in a cushioned pulpit. Tears ran down many a face; and sighs and groans almost drowned the voice of the speaker. These perhaps, were mere practised responses, as artificial, and as little sincere, as the drawl of the parish clerk in the English church service. And yet in some cases, they had every appearance of being genuine bursts of natural feeling, — an involuntary tribute to the eloquence and fervor of the speaker.
Next followed the exhortation. The text was from Job; and the preacher began upon the trite subject of patience. But like all ignorant and illiterate speakers, he soon deserted his original topic, and ran on from one thing to another, with very little of method or connection. Now and then, some sparks of sense were struck out; but they were speedily quenched in a flood of absurdity. It was a strange farrago; but it was delivered with a volubility, an earnestness and a force, which produced a strong effect upon the nearers. It was not long before he had worked them up to a pitch of excitement, which far surpassed that of the dancers in the opposite corner. Indeed, the dancing group grew thinner and thinner, and the squeak of the fiddle sounded weaker and weaker, till at last the fiddler threw down his instrument, and with his remaining adherents hastened to swell the audience of a performer whose powers so much out-matched his own.
As the sermon proceeded, the groans and cries of mercy and amen, grew louder and more frequent; and several, overcome by their feelings, or wishing, or affecting to be so, fell flat upon the ground, and screamed and shouted as if they were possessed by evil spirits. So strong was the contagion, and so powerful the sympathetic infectiousness of this spiritual intoxication, that I, a mere looker on, felt a strong impulse to rush among the crowd, and to shriek and shout with the rest. The paroxysm was now at its height, and the speaker was almost exhausted by his vehement gesticulation, when stamping his foot, with more than common energy — he burst in the head of the barrel and tumbled headlong among his auditors.
This unlucky accident instantly converted the cries and groans of his hearers, into shouts of irrepressible laughter; and they seemed to pass all at once, from a state of the utmost terror and solemnity, into outrageous and uncontrollable merriment. The fiddler crept out from amidst the hurly burly, caught up his fiddle, and struck up a lively air, — I forget the name of it, but I recollect very well that it contained some allusion to the disaster of his rival. The dance was renewed; while the preacher, with a few of his more attached hearers, slunk away' mortified and disheartened. The dancers grew more boisterous, and the fiddler played his best; till at last the party had fairly tired themselves out, and were too much exhausted to keep it up any longer.
Men born and bred in slavery, are not men but children. Their faculties are never permitted to unfold themselves; and it is the aim of their masters, and the necessary effect of their condition, to keep them in a state of perpetual imbecility. Tyranny is ever hostile to every species of mental developement; for a state of ignorance involves of necessity, a state of degradation, and of helplessness. I soon made myself acquainted with a number of my fellow prisoners, and entered into conversation with them. Some of them had been in the jail a fortnight, and others longer. I presently discovered that they considered their confinement as a sort of holyday. They had nothing to do; and not to be compelled to work seemed, for them, the supreme idea of happiness. As to being confined within the walls of a prison; they had the liberty of the yard, and it was just as agreeable being shut up within four brick walls, as to be prisoner on a plantation, forbidden to go beyond the line of its zig-zag fences. Then they had no overseer to harass them, and nothing to do but to dance and sleep. Nothing was wanted but a little whiskey, and even that was not always wanting. "They seemed anxious to drown all memory of the past, and all dread of the future, and to bask without concern, in the sunshine of their present felicity.