"Sing that dear
old plantation melody from London," she cried, "so that my poor boy
may know there are worse things than death." And all this witless
piffle because of a quite natural misunderstanding of mine.
I have before referred to what I supposed was an American plantation
melody which I had heard a black sing at Brighton, meaning one of the
English blacks who colour themselves for the purpose, but on reciting
the lines at an evening affair, when the American folksongs were under
discussion, I was told that it could hardly have been written by an
American at all, but doubtless by one of our own composers who had
taken too little trouble with his facts. I mean to say, the song as I
had it, betrayed misapprehensions both of a geographical and faunal
nature, but I am certain that no one thought the worse of me for
having been deceived, and I had supposed the thing forgotten. Yet now
what did I hear but that a garbled version of this song had been
supposedly sung by myself, the Hobbs person meantime mincing across
the stage and gesturing with a monocle which he had somehow procured,
the words being quite simply:
"Away down south in Michigan,
Where I was a slave, so happy and so gay,
'Twas there I mowed the cotton and the cane.
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