Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

BENITO CERENO 121
hypochondriacs, Johnson and Byron— it may be, some-
thing like the hypochondriac Benito Cereno— took to
their hearts, almost to the exclusion of the entire white
race, their serving-men, the negroes, Barber and Fletcher.
But if there be that in the negro which exempts him
from the inflicted sourness of the morbid or cynical
mind, how, in his most prepossessing aspects, must he
appear to a benevolent one ? When at ease with respect
to exterior things, Captain Delano's nature was not
so. At
only benign, but familiarly and humorously
home, he had often taken rare satisfaction in sitting in
his door, watching some free man of colour at his work
or play. If on a voyage he chanced to have a black
sailor, invariably he was on chatty and half-gamesome
terms with him. In fact, like most men of a good,)
blithe heart, Captain Delano took to negroes, not philan-^
thropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundj
land dogs.
Hitherto, the circumstances in which he found the
San Dominick had repressed the tendency. But in the
cuddy, relieved from his former uneasiness, and, for
various reasons, more sociably inclined than at any
previous period of the day, and seeing the coloured
servant, napkin on arm, so debonnaire about his master,
in a business so familiar as that of shaving, too, all his
old weakness for negroes returned.
Among other things, he was amused with an odd
instance of the African love of bright colours and fine
shows*, in the black's informally taking from the flaglocker
a great piece of bunting of all hues, and lavishly
tucking it under his master's chin for an apron.
The mode of shaving among the Spaniards is a little
different from what it is with other nations. They have
a basin, specifically called a barber's basin, which on
one side is scooped out, so as accurately to receive the