"I glanced about my person, realising that I was part of a bizarre congregation that represented both high and low society, but how could we be anything other than a queer assembly of misfits when one considered the personage who was to be buried on this melancholy English morning?"
Francis Barber attends Samuel Johnson's funeral only to find himself a member of strange little community of people who knew him. As a former slave and a black man living in colonial America, Barber did not expect to be welcomed into such a group. Johnson was a progressive thinker. As time passes, however, the narrator, a third party observer, uses his social intuition to predict Barber's eventual fall from the good graces of these prejudiced people.
"This peacock of a gentleman was known to hold an ungenerous impression of his fellow man, be they black or white, but it particularly galled him that during the doctor's life he was never able to dislodge Francis Barber from his high position in Dr. Johnson's affection."
The narrator of Barber's story observes the nuanced opinions of Johnson's friends concerning his association with Barber, who worked for him. The executor of Johnson's estate and friend to him during life, John Hawkins, is here described as a misanthrope who particularly disliked Barber's good standing with Dr. Johnson.
"Apparently Mr. Barber squandered the not inconsiderable sum of money that his master left to him in his will. Furthermore, if you don't mind my saying, the fellow did let himself go, for when I last saw him he'd lost all his teeth, and his face was severely marked with the pox."
The narrator betrays his prejudice here as he adopts the tone of a neighborhood gossip in describing Barber's last days. He says that he is not surprised that Barber lost his money and suffered poor health. As such a privileged member of white society, the narrator judges Barber extremely harshly, trying to hold him to the nearly impossible standards and expectations of his white peers.
