SOMBRE FESTIVITIES
All day yesterday the cars were carrying colored people of all shades and tints, and of all sizes and both sexes, out to Hayes' Park, to celebrate the anniversary of the emancipation of their race in England's West Indian possessions years ago. They rode the fiery untamed steeds that are kept for equestrian duty in the grounds; they practised pistol shooting, but abstained from destroying the targets; they swung; they promenaded among the shrubbery; they filled themselves up with beer and sandwiches - all just as the thing is done there by white folks - and they essayed to dance, but the effort was not a brilliant success. It was interesting to look at, though. For languid, slow-moving, pretentious, impressive, solemn, and excessively high-toned and aristocratic dancing, commend us to the disenthralled North American negro, when there is no restraint upon his natural propensity to put on airs. White folks of the upper stratum of society pretend to walk through quadrilles, in a stately way, but these saddle-colored young ladies can discount them in the slow-movement evidence of high gentility. They don't know much about dancing, but they "let on" magnificently, as if the mazes of a quadrille were their native element, and they move serenely through it and tangle it hopelessly and inextricably, with an unctuous satisfaction that is surpassingly pleasant to witness. By the middle of the afternoon about two hundred darkies were assembled at the Park; or rather, to be precise, there was not much "darky" about it, either; for if the prevailing lightness of tint was worth anything as evidence, the noble miscegenationist had been skirmishing considerably among them in days gone by. It was expected that the colored race would come out strong in the matter of numbers (and otherwise) in the evening, when a grand ball was to be
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