He looked at
the woman--the mother--casually, then again and again.
The little convent girl saw him coming, leading some one toward her.
She rose. The captain took her hand first, before the other greeting,
"Good-by, my dear," he said. He tried to add something else, but
seemed undetermined what. "Be a good little girl--" It was evidently
all he could think of. Nodding to the woman behind him, he turned on
his heel, and left.
One of the deck-hands was sent to fetch her trunk. He walked out
behind them, through the cabin, and the crowd on deck, down the
stairs, and out over the gangway. The little convent girl and her
mother went with hands tightly clasped. She did not turn her eyes to
the right or left, or once (what all passengers do) look backward at
the boat which, however slowly, had carried her surely over dangers
that she wot not of. All looked at her as she passed. All wanted to
say good-by to the little convent girl, to see the mother who had been
deprived of her so long. Some expressed surprise in a whistle; some
in other ways. All exclaimed audibly, or to themselves, "Colored!"
It takes about a month to make the round trip from New Orleans to
Cincinnati and back, counting five days' stoppage in New Orleans. It
was a month to a day when the steamboat came puffing and blowing up to
the wharf again, like a stout dowager after too long a walk; and the
same scene of confusion was enacted, as it had been enacted twelve
times a year, at almost the same wharf for twenty years; and the
same calm, a death calmness by contrast, followed as usual the next
morning.
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