Sabine Baring-Gould

“ He was condemned by his profession as pilot over Gull-Fleet to be always at his post—to have indeed a very light task, but a monotonous and trying one—and his soul was full of ambition to see the world, to visit Asia, Africa, and America. Why should every young cub at Brightlingsea be able to follow his desires and go in a sailing craft somewhere, and see something beyond the flat coast of Essex, and sea, purer, bluer than the estuary of the Colne?
‘I’ve heard tell,’ said Mr Shamgar Tapp, ‘that there be black people—niggers. Why am I never to set my eyes on a nigger? ”

“ Doesn’t reason, and the light of nature, and daily observation show that the sun browns the skin, and doesn’t blacken? The sun black a man’s skin as a shoe-boy blacks a boot!—get along!’
The bridge was closed, the lines united.
‘Life is made up of contrarinesses,’ said Tapp; ‘else why should I have been left a widower with that rollicking she-baby—that Jael to bring up. Lord! what a bother I had with her, and spoon-feeding and teething, and now—she’ll be running after all the boys. That’s the way with gals. Then there’s her money, that is, her mother’s money ”

“ From all I can see, the sun burns us brown, just the same as roasting coffee or doing a chop; it don’t make smut of us. Well, I believe—and till I see and satisfy myself with my own eyes, I will believe—that the real nigger is a sort of a deep red brown—a very dark chestnut ”