IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY

I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of
them to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water
of ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living
on the fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of
Shelley, if I had been justly dealt with.

During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance.
I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and
that that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive
honor by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter.
This was all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the
proofs of it were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted
in the girls' colleges of America and its view taught in their literary
classes.

In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country
have arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multitudes
unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one
may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then,
I address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic
historical fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning
it may interest them.

First, as to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several
ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites
anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly
popular with them. It is a competition in elegant deportment. They hire
a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two
sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is
provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of
experts in deportment is appointed to award it. Sometimes there are as
many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators.
One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in
what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the
vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes
on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws
into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he
throws into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise:
watch-chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with,
snowy handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new
stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may
have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind,
and she may add other helps, according to her judgment. When the review
by individual detail is over, a grand review of all the contestants in
procession follows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and
smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of
experts to make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a verdict. The
successful competitor gets the prize which I have before mentioned, and
an abundance of applause and envy along with it. The negroes have a
name for this grave deportment-tournament; a name taken from the prize
contended for. They call it a Cake-walk.