He was eternally blacking boots _en amateur._ Fullalove got
in a rage at this, and insisted on his letting his fellow-creatures'
leather alone. Vespasian pleaded hard, especially for leave to black
Colonel Kenealy. "The cunnell," said he pathetically, "is such a
tarnation fine gentleman spoilt for want of a lilly bit of blacking."
Fullalove replied that the colonel had got a servant whose mission it was
to black his shoes. This simply amused Vespasian. "A servant?" said he.
"Yah! yah! What is the use of white servants? They are not biddable.
Massa Fullalove, sar, Goramighty he reared all white men to kick up a
dust, white servants inspecially, and the darkies to brush 'em; and
likewise additionally to make their boots she a lilly bit." He concluded
with a dark hint that the colonel's white servant's own shoes, though
better blacked than his master's, were anything but mirrors, and that
this child had his eye on them.
The black desperado emerged on tiptoe from Kenealy's cabin, just as
Macbeth does from the murdered Duncan's chamber: only with a pair of
boots in his hand instead of a pair of daggers; got into the moonlight,
and finding himself uninterrupted, assumed the whistle of innocence, and
polished them to the nine, chuckling audibly.
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