warm sun and monotonous clank of the oars in the row-locks. At length, after a moment's pause, which showed a spontaneous impulse, one of the men began a sort of religious chant in a high-pitched voice, which the others joined in a sort of continuous accompaniment of four or five words, ending with a cry mournful enough to have been the expression of great pain. I have forgotten the words of the song; it was something about going to Jesus, I believe; but every time my thoughts go back to the Sea Islands, I see the intense, rapt faces of my crew, their eyes rolling, their heads swaying, their whole bodies swinging to the time of the music, until the boat, which before had only crawled against the tide, swept along by the successive leaps which their strong arms gave to the oars. It was a scene long to be remembered. Those sturdy forms and swarthy faces, which felt away from home when under the cold influence which one of the white race always brings among them, had found their way back to the spiritual Africa through their song. It was as if my feigned slumber had carried me away to that continent where reason is unknown, and life goes by impulse. In a moment I was with them in the home of their race. The low shores with their endless procession of palms, the warm glow of the afternoon sun, the responsive cry which came from some solitary black paddling slowly along with the tide, were well fitted to an African scene. For three hours I was farther away from my race than I have ever been before; and when we came in sight of Beaufort, I could not but feel that its houses, spectral-looking as they were in the twilight, were too real for the revery which had ended. It should have showed me the conical huts of a negro village; should have been, in fact, what the Charleston people call it, the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey.

Until one has had the good fortune to see how thoroughly exotic the negro is, one cannot appreciate the difficulties of making him a part of the social system which fits us. The negro is

not easily read; he hides himself, as is the habit of all oppressed races, quite adroitly sometimes. Under his covering of imitated manners or stolidity slumber the passions of a mental organization widely differing from our own. There are some superb qualities in him, and some which make his best friends almost despair. The firmest bases for hope we have lie in his strong imitative faculties.

The all-important question is, What should we do to secure to this people the highest cultivation of which they are capable? Should we begin by trying to force upon them the last product of our civilization, — intellectual culture, — or should we first try and create in them the conditions of this intellectual culture? It needs no argument to convince an average mind that you could not effect any great alteration in a Comanche by teaching him English grammar. He would be a fool, indeed, who expected that the consequences would be the immediate change in the nature and purposes of the Indian. Now the fact is, we have almost as much to do in order to change the average negro into an intelligent citizen in a white society as we should have if we tried to embody the Indian into our government; and we have begun by teaching him English grammar. The school has its place in civilization, and, as a teacher, I should be the last to belittle its importance; but it is the last step in the development of a race, not the first, and its value consists in the fact that it is the final result of the education of a thousand years of effort; and when we undertake to civilize a race as foreign to us in every trait as the negroes, by imposing upon them this final product of our national growth, we wrong ourselves and them. Those who are clamoring for immediate high-school education for the negro will be the first to condemn him, when it is seen that this will not give him what he needs. And unless he is trained in thrift, unless his conception of life is enlarged, unless he is freed from the instincts which the savage life of a hundred generations

have planted in his blood, this education can do nothing for him. The training which is to shape the sensuous, enthusiastic, fickle negro into a useful citizen must be the training which a society alone can give. This schooling must come from the combined example of his neighbors of the higher race, - men and women sturdily working out their careers, starting from the same level of fortune as he does; give him the influence of this example, and you give him a chance which he has not at present, which he cannot have until those who have taken his destiny into their hands get some idea of the magnitude of their task.

To give the negro this chance two things need be done. First, every effort must be made to bring the best influence of the existing white population to bear upon him, by removing all barriers of hate which the revolution may have left, and starting that population at once on the road to prosperity. But this population is too small for its work, and is also in itself in need of teaching in its new condition, so that it is necessary to seek in the immigration of an industrious foreign population the teachers needed for the work. Every German family would be to the negro a school worth more to him, at the present stage of his career, than all the universities in the world. I saw at Beaufort a German of that admirable class well trained in both head and hands, who intended trying to found a colony on one of the islands. God grant him success! His hard-working countrymen may do for this black people what the Incas did for the old Peruvians.

Every move of the government has been clearly against the negro in this district. Confiscating the property of the whites, it cut him off from what would have been, on the whole, the good influence of his former masters. The whites who supplied their places were, perhaps, the worst specimens which could have been sent among the negroes. The property of the whites, taken under the law for the direct tax of 1861, has been absurdly held by the government, the negroes remaining upon it as tenants at will. They pay a tax equal to about fifty per cent on the cash value of much of the land, and have no certain future. In place of some practical teaching in the arts of life, the government has endeavored to civilize them with the alphabet. Besides this, the constant tutelage has fixed in the negro the belief that if he will just sit still and open his mouth, Uncle Samuel will see that he is fed.

Experience, which would act in spite of the government, has taught the negroes something, so that they seem to be slowly gaining in some things. A gentleman of excellent judgment tells me they are more honest than they were just after emancipation. But there can be no real future until the North learns that they cannot exorcise all the evils here with that idol of our modern civilization, a primary school; until they learn that, the negro, if he is to be lifted up to the level of ourselves, must be raised by strong hands and active brains, by helpers who, not seeking to ease the hard road he has to travel, toil with him, and give the real aid of example. N. S. Shaler.

see 'f ye can't stop out this 'ere wind. I'm e'eny most used up with it."

So spake Sam Lawson, contemplating mournfully a new broad-brimmed straw hat in which my soul was rejoicing.

It was the dripping end of a sour November afternoon, which closed up a "spell o' weather" that had been steadily driving wind and rain for a week past, and we boys sought the shelter and solace of his shop, and, opening the door, let in the wind aforesaid.

Sam had been all day in one of his periodical fits of desperate industry. The smoke and sparks had been seen flying out of his shop chimney in a frantic manner, and the blows of his hammer had resounded with a sort of feverish persistence, intermingled with a doleful wailing of psalm-tunes of the most lugubrious description.

These fits of industry on Sam's part were an affliction to us boys, especially when they happened to come on Saturday; for Sam was as much a part of our Saturday-afternoon calculations as if we had a regular deed of property in him; and we had been all day hanging round his shop, looking in from time to time in the vague hope that he would propose something to brighten up the dreary monotony of a holiday in which it had been impossible to go anywhere or do anything.

"Sam, ain't you coming over to tell us some stories to-night?"

"Bless your soul and body, boys! life ain't made to be spent tellin' stories. Why, I shall hev to be up here workin' till arter twelve o'clock," said Sam, who was suddenly possessed with a spirit of the most austere diligence. "Here I be up to my neck in work,

she sent word she must have 'em tonight; and there's Lady Lothrop, she wants her warmin'-pan right off, — they can't non' on 'em wait a minit longer. I've ben a drivin' and workin' all day like a nigger-slave. Then there was Jeduth Pettybone, he brought down them colts to-day, and I worked the biggest part o' the mornin' shoein' on 'em; and then Jeduth he said he could n't make change to pay me, so there wa'n't nothin' comin' in for 't; and then Hepsy she kep' a jawin' at me all dinner-time 'bout that. Why, I warn't to blame now, was I? I can't make everybody do jest right and pay regular, can I? So ye see it goes, boys, gettin' yer bread by the sweat o' your brow; and sometimes sweatin' and not gettin' yer bread. That are 's what I call the cuss, the 'riginal cuss, that come on man for hearkenin' to the voice o' his wife, - that are was what did it. Itallers kind o' riles me up with Mother Eve when I think on 't. The women hain't no bisness to fret as they do, 'cause they sot this 'ere state o' things goin' in the fust place."

"But, Sam, Aunt Lois and Aunt Nabby are both going over to Miss Mehitabel's to tea. Now you just come over and eat supper with us and tell us a story, do."

"Gone out to tea, be they?" said Sam, relaxing his hammering, with a brightening gleam stealing gradually across his lanky visage. "Wal, that are looks like a providential openin' to be sure. Wal, I guess I'll come. What's the use o' never havin' a good time? Ef you work yourself up into shoestrings you don't get no thanks for it, and things in this world's 'bout as broad as they is long: the women 'll scold, turn 'em which way ye will; a

good mug o' cider and some cold victuals over to the Deacon's 'll kind o' comfort a feller up, and your granny, she's sort o' merciful, she don't rub it into a fellow all the time like Miss Lois."

"Now let's see, boys," said Sam, when a comfortable meal of pork and beans had been disposed of, and a mug of cider was set down before the fire to warm. "I s'pect ye 'll like to hear a Down East story to-night."

Of course we did, and tumbled over each other in our eagerness to get the nearest place to the narrator.

Sam's method of telling a story was as leisurely as that of some modern novel-writers. He would take his time for it, and proceed by easy stages. It was like the course of a dreamy, slowmoving river through a tangled meadow flat, not a rush nor a bush but was reflected in it; in short, Sam gave his philosophy of matters and things in general as he went along, and was especially careful to impress an edifying moral.

"Wal, ye see, boys, ye know I was born down to Newport, - there where it's all ships and shipping, and sich. My old mother she kep' a boardin'house for sailors down there. Wal, ye see I rolled and tumbled round the world pretty consid'able afore I got settled down here in Oldtown.

"Ye see my mother she wanted to bind me out to a blacksmith, but I kind o' sort o' did n't seem to take to it. It was kind o' hard work, and boys is apt to want to take life easy. Wal, I used to run off to the sea-shore, and lie stretched out on them rocks there, and look off on to the water; and it did use to look so sort o' blue and peaceful, and the ships come a sailin' in and out so sort o' easy and natural, that I felt as if that are 'd be jest the easiest kind o' life a fellow could have. All he had to do was to get aboard one o' them ships and be off seekin' his fortin at t' other end o' the rainbow, where gold grows on bushes and there's valleys o' diamonds.

"So nothin' would do but I gin my old mother the slip, and away I went to sea, with my duds tied up in a handkercher.

"I tell ye what, boys, ef ye want to find an easy life, don't ye never go to sea. I tell ye life on shipboard ain't what it looks to be on shore. I had n't been aboard more 'n three hours afore I was the sickest critter that ever ye did see, and I tell you, I did n't get no kind o' compassion. Cap'ns and mates they allers thinks boys hain't no kind o' business to have no bowels nor nothin', and they put it on 'em sick or well. It's jest a kick here and a cuff there and a twitch by the ear in t' other place; one a shovin' on 'em this way and another hittin' on 'em a clip, and all growlin' from mornin' to night. I believe the way my ears got so long was bein' hauled out o' my berth by 'em that are's a sailor's regular way o' wakin' up a boy.

"Wal, by time I got to the Penobscot country all I wanted to know was how to get back again. That are 's jest the way folks go all their lives, boys. Its all fuss, fuss, and stew, stew, till ye get somewhere; and then it's fuss, fuss, and stew, stew to get back ag'in; jump here and scratch yer eyes out, and jump there and scratch 'em in ag'in.

"Wal, I kind o' poked round in Penobscot country till I got a berth on the Brilliant that was lyin' at Camden, goin' to sail to Boston.

--

"Ye see the Brilliant she was a tight little sloop in the government service: 't was in the war times, ye see, and Commodore Tucker that is now (he was Cap'n Tucker then), he had the command on her, - used to run up and down all the coast takin' observations o' the British, and keepin' his eye out on 'em, and givin' on 'em a nip here and a clip there, 'cordin' as he got a good chance. Why, your gran'ther knew old Commodore Tucker. It was he that took Dr. Franklin over Minister to France, and dodged all the British vessels, right in the middle of the I tell you that are was like run

war.