ABSTRACT
Jason was at first confounded with the noises, dances, music, and games that were going on. By this time nine-tenths of the blacks of the city, and of the whole country within thirty or forty miles, indeed, were collected in thousands in those fields, beating banjoes, singing African songs, drinking, and worst of all, laughing in a way that seemed to set their very hearts rattling within their ribs. Everything wore the aspect of good-humor, though it was good-humor in its broadest and coarsest forms. Every sort of common game was in requisition; while drinking was far from being neglected. Still, not a man was drunk. A drunken negro, indeed, is by no means a common thing. The features that distin guish a Pinkster frolic from the usual scenes at fairs, and other merry-
4 J. Fenimore Cooper, Satanstoe (New York, 1900), 61, 65-66.
