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said to practise the black art, our constitutions have nothing to say about the colour of a lawyer's skin.”
A coloured man can now be called to the Virginia bar.
But the examples of such calling are so few as to appear like special wonders.
As a rule, the Negro is a toiler of the earth, content to be a toiler of the earth.
He hardly cares to rise.
He has no stinging wants.
If not a waiter in the house, he is a worker in the field.
In either case his labour is worth a fifth part of similar labour by a White man; yet his food of squash and green-corn is cheap, while he can live on the rewards of his unskilful and uncertain toil.
He understands the value of a dollar; it will buy him grapes and bacon, beans, whisky, and tobacco; but he cannot see the value of a second and third dollar, since he can do no more than eat, drink, chew, and smoke all day. The morrow is the future; and a Negro's life is in the passing hour.
One thing only in the future weighs sufficiently on a Negro's mind to shape his action.
He is very anxious about his funeral.
“What makes us poor,” says Bill, the waiter in my room, “is de expens ob buryina us.”
The
1875.
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