Tom got down from the carriage, and looked about with an air of calm, still enjoyment. The negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his heart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the ridicule of the colder and more correct white race.
The underlying message of this segment is that if a slave were seem to enjoy the new place they may be working at, their white slave owners may choose to change that notion for them by making work hard. This is all purely an inference of course of the times.