Read "Arthur Mervyn" by Charles Brockden Brown online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I mounted the stage-coach at daybreak the next day, in company with a sallow Frenchman from St. Domingo, his fiddle-case, an ape, and two female blacks. The Frenchman, after passing the suburbs, took out his violin and amused himself with humming to his own _tweedle-tweedle_. The monkey now and then munched an apple, which was given to him from a basket by the blacks, who gazed with stupid wonder, and an exclamatory _La! La! _ upon the passing scenery, or chattered to each other in a sort of open-mouthed, half-articulate, monotonous, singsong jargon.
The man looked seldom either on this side or that; and spoke only to rebuke the frolics of the monkey, with a "Tenez! Dominique! Prenez garde! Diable noir!"