it seemed the great black parliament sitting in tophet. a hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black angel of doom was beating a book in a pulpit. it was a negro church; and the preacher’s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. ha, ishmael, muttered i, backing out, wretched entertainment at the sign of ‘the trap!’