A clever colored lad from Philadelphia was the special object of his contemptuous detestation. He ordered him to get the liquors and hot water every few minutes until near midnight. When the fires were out, and hot water was not to be had, and the bar shut, and the liquors also absent, then he raved at the lad for not waking up steward and purser, and securing the delectable elements. If the boy went slowly to his impossible task, how he cursed him! how he blasphemed his people! how he cursed the Abolitionists for setting them free! declaimed against Massachusetts in particular for her share in this matter, and declared their incapacity for liberty, though the boy was tenfold more capable of freedom than himself. Yet he was as shrewd as any other Yankee, and said that slavery was as good as dead in Cuba, and he had persuaded his wife, and sold off all his "niggers" when he could get something for them. I am sure they were glad to get away from the lash of his tongue and arm, and I pitied the hired hands on whom he voided the rheum of an arrogant disposition, a trained contempt and hatred, a false theory, and a fearful appetite. Nay, his wife must suffer often from that scourge.
He was a good Romanist withal, though without any of the orthodoxy of his Church. He said that he prayed nightly to the Virgin, but he did not believe in her, or Christ, or the Bible, or any thing but God. I said, "If you believe in God, you believe in Christ, for Jesus Christ is God." "Jesus Christ!" he broke forth; "——Jesus Christ!" It was the worst oath I had ever heard. I called him quick to his senses, and he halted a moment in his mad and profane career. He was a Free Religionist, like three others whom I have met on this trip, two of whom were also European Roman Catholics, one a Bostonian, showing that there is no distinction of clime or race in this anti-faith. Like the others, he showed his free religion and modern theology by most outrageous swearing. It is the true creed of that churchless church, and shows that men who profess to deny damnation, hell, Christ, and even God himself, are most profuse in using terms which show that these are the profoundest beliefs of their real nature.
