high esteem, and are
often accompanied by much drinking and not infrequently by cutting
scrapes, for the Negro's passions lie on the surface and are easily
aroused. In South Carolina the general belief seems to be that the
dispensary law has been beneficial. There is also a universal fondness
for tobacco in all its forms. Gambling prevails wherever there is ready
money and not infrequently leads to serious assaults. Music has great
charms while a circus needs not the excuse of children to justify it in
the Negro's eyes. Some of the holidays are celebrated, and when on the
coast the blacks dubbed the 30th of May "Desecration Day," there were
those who thought it well named. Active sports, with the occasional
exception of a ball game, are not preferred to the more quiet pleasure
of sitting about in the sunshine conversing with friends. America can
not show a happier, more contented lot of people than these same blacks.

If we turn our attention to other characteristics of the Negro we must
notice his different moral standard. To introduce the little I shall say
on this point let me quote from a well known anthropologist. "There is
nothing more difficult for us to realize, civilized as we are, than the
mental state of the man far behind us in cultivation, as regards what we
call par excellence 'morality.' It is not indecency; it is simply an
animal absence of modesty. Acts which are undeniably quite natural,
since they are the expression of a primordial need, essential to the
duration of the species, but which a long ancestral and individual
education has trained us to subject to a rigorous restraint, and to the
accomplishment of which, consequently, we can not help attaching a
certain shame, do not in the least shock the still imperfect conscience
of the primitive man." From somewhat this standpoint we must judge of
the Negro. Two or three illustrations will suffice. Talking last summer
to a porter in a small hotel, I asked him if he had ever lived on a
farm. He replied that he had and that he often thought of returning.
Asking him why he did not he said that it would be necessary for him to
get a wife and a lot of other things. I suggested the possibility of
boarding in another family. He shook his head and said: "Niggers is
queer folks, boss. 'Pears to me they don' know what they gwine do. Ef I
go out and live in a man's house like as not I run away wid dat man's
wife." The second illustration is taken from an unpublishe