Soon ascertaining that such places were the best, and, excepting the
public prints, the only resort to ascertain the latest intelligence, and
to collect information respecting the movements of the black
population, and the company, however exceptionable, being termed there
respectable, I adopted the plan, on several successive evenings, of
quietly smoking a cigar and listening to passing observations and
remarks. Some of these were disgusting enough; so much so, that I will
not offend my readers by repeating them. Suffice it to say, that any
individual possessing the slightest pretensions to the name of
gentleman, in any hotel I had visited in England, on indulging in the
indecorous language I heard at these places, would, by a very summary
process, have met with ejectment, without ceremony. Here, however, a
laxity of moral feeling prevails, that stifles all sense of propriety;
and scurrility, obscene language, and filthy jests, of which the
coloured population are, I suppose, per force of habit, the principal
butts, form the chief attractions of such places of resort to their
vitiated frequenters.
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