After eighteen days we cast anchor in St. Thomas harbor, and pleasant as our voyage had been we were glad to see land. We were to stop a day for coaling.
Taking the two sisters, we went ashore in one of the many boats surrounding the ship, all manned by scantily robed black fellows. The town, with its hordes of gaudily dressed and noisy blacks, was most interesting. I had hired the boat for the day, so the three black fellows accompanied us around the town. Each wore a stovepipe hat. The remainder of their furniture consisted of cotton shirt and trousers. The men were barefooted, of course.
My wife was the typical blue-eyed, golden-haired Englishwoman, and was the observed of all observers in that black mob. I myself was all in white, from canvas shoes to white umbrella. So, between the two sisters in their black robes and white bonnets and our attending boatmen, along with a mob of half-naked black boys that followed, we formed quite a circus and created a commotion in the town.
First I took the sisters to the cathedral. Both were grateful and knelt at the altar for a full half hour while we waited. Then after visiting several stores to make some small purchases, we went to a circus showing there that week. I bought ten tickets for my party. Everything they saw in the town was marvelous and strange to them. When we entered the circus tent the sisters were perplexed and thought it must be a new sort of church. But words would fail to express their amazement when they saw the clown and bespangled horseman enter the ring and the performance begin. They were in a new and hitherto undreamed-of world, and gazed in childlike wonderment on the scene, and, like children, only saw the glitter of the spangles and thought both men and women performers were angels of beauty. Even after the thing was over the magic and witchery of it all rested on them. Their hearts were deeply stirred and their thoughts were with the performers. To please them we sat until the audience had dispersed, and, when going out, one of them, speaking of the performers, told my wife they must be "very near to God."
Then we went to the hotel. I dispersed my cortege and ordered a room for ourselves and one for the sisters, and we all took a nap until evening. Then we had some negro singing and dancing for our amusement in the courtyard of the hotel, and at 9 o'clock we went out for a moonlight walk under the tropical sky. About 10 we found we had had enough of it and were glad to betake ourselves to bed.