Chapter 5

"Here's your fine clams!
As white as snow!
On Rockaway these clams do grow."

_New York Cries_.

It was some time before Jason's offended dignity and disappointment would
permit him to smile at the mistake; and we had walked some distance towards
Old Slip, where I was to meet Dirck, before the pedagogue even opened his
lips. Then, the only allusion he made to the white wine, was to call it
"a plaguy Dutch cheat;" for Jason had implicitly relied on having that
peculiar beverage of his caste, known as "bitters." What he meant by
a _Dutch_ cheat, I do not know; unless he thought the buttermilk was
particularly Dutch, and _this_ buttermilk an imposition.

Dirck was waiting for me at the Old Slip; and, on inquiry, I found he had
enjoyed his draught of white wine as well as myself, and was ready for
immediate service. We proceeded along the wharves in a body, admiring the
different vessels that lined them. About nine o'clock, all three of us
passed up Wall Street, on the stoops of which, no small portion of its
tenants were already seated, enjoying the sight of the negroes, as, with
happy "shining" faces they left the different dwellings, to hasten to the
Pinkster field. Our passage through the street attracted a good deal of
attention; for, being all three strangers, it was not to be supposed we
could be thus seen in a body, without exciting a remark. Such a thing could
hardly have been expected in London itself.

After showing Jason the City Hall, Trinity Church, and the City Tavern, we
went out of town, taking the direction of a large common that the King's
officers had long used for a parade-ground, and which has since been called
the Park, though it would be difficult to say why, since it is barely a
paddock in size, and certainly has never been used to keep any animals
wilder than the boys of the town. A park, I suppose, it will one day
become, though it has little at present that comports with my ideas of such
a thing. On this common, then, was the Pinkster ground, which was now quite
full of people, as well as of animation.

There was nothing new in a Pinkster frolic, either to Dirck, or to myself;
though Jason gazed at the whole procedure with wonder. He was born within
seventy miles of that very spot, but had not the smallest notion before, of
such a holiday as Pinkster. There are few blacks in Connecticut, I believe;
and those that are there, are so ground down in the Puritan mill, that they
are neither fish, flesh, nor red-herring, as we say of a nondescript. No
man ever heard of a festival in New England, that had not some immediate
connection with the saints, or with politics.

Jason was at first confounded with the noises, dances, music,