In this group about thirty men and women were making the ground quake and the woods ring with their unrestrained jollity.  Marc Antony was rattling away at the bones, Nero fiddling as if Rome were burning, and Hannibal clawing at a banjo as if the fate of Carthage hung on its strings.  Napoleon, as young and as lean as when he mounted the bridge of Lodi, with the battle-smoke still on his face, was moving his legs even faster than in the Russian retreat; and John Wesley was using his heels in a way that showed they didn’t belong to the Methodist church.  But the central figures of the group were Cato and Victoria.  The lady had a face like a thunder-cloud, and a form that, if whitewashed, would have outsold the ‘Greek Slave.’  She was built on springs, and ’floated in the dance’ like a feather in a high wind.  Cato’s mouth was like an alligator’s, but when it opened, it issued notes that would draw the specie even in this time of general suspension.  As we approached he was singing a song, but he paused on perceiving us, when the Colonel, tossing a handful of coin among them, called out, ’Go on, boys; let the gentleman have some music; and you, Vic, show your heels like a beauty.’

A general scramble followed, in which ‘Vic’s’ sense of decorum forbade her to join, and she consequently got nothing.  Seeing that, I tossed her a silver piece, which she caught.  Grinning her thanks, she shouted, ’Now, clar de track, you nigs; start de music.  I’se gwine to gib de gemman de breakdown.’

And she did; and such a breakdown!  ‘We w’ite folks,’ though it was no new thing to the Colonel or Tommy, almost burst with laughter.

In a few minutes nearly every negro on the plantation, attracted by the presence of the Colonel and myself, gathered around the performers; and a shrill voice at my elbow called out, ’Look har, ye lazy, good-for-nuffin’ niggers, carn’t ye fotch a cheer for Massa Davy and de strange gemman?’

‘Is that you, Aunty?’ said the Colonel.  ‘How d’ye do?’

‘Sort o’ smart, Massa Davy; sort o’ smart; how is ye?’

‘Pretty well, Aunty; pretty well.  Have a seat.’  And the Colonel helped her to one of the chairs that were brought for us, with as much tenderness as he would have shown to an aged white lady.

The ‘exercises,’ which had been suspended for a moment, recommenced, and the old negress entered into them as heartily as the youngest present.  A song from Cato followed the dance, and then about twenty ’gentleman and lady’ darkies joined, two at a time, in a half ‘walk-round’ half breakdown, which the Colonel told me was what suggested the well-known ‘white-nigger’ dance and song of Lucy Long.  Other performances succeeded, and the whole formed a scene impossible to describe.  Such uproarious jollity, such full and perfect enjoyment, I had never seen in humanity, black or white.  The little nigs, only four or five years old, would rush into the ring and shuffle away at the breakdowns till I feared their short legs would come off; while all the darkies joined in the songs, till the branches of the old pines above shook as if they too had caught the spirit of the music.  In the midst of it, the Colonel said to me, in an exultant tone,—­