We were given tea in the library, our hostess at this function being a
young lady of five or six years--a granddaughter of Captain John
Ridgely, present master of Hampton--who, with her pink cheeks, her
serious eyes and demeanor, looked like a canvas by Sir Joshua come to
life, as she sat in a large chair and ate a large red apple.

Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into
the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the
absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a
style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put
on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this
respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven
image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported
from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the
most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to
think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought,
that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we
know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover,
they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is
assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man.

Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the
house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true
appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of
natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and
servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy
rôle as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the
verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro
servants in the South.