h I had introduced. It was the phosphates which
inspired him.

"Dey is mighty fine prostrate wukks heah, sah."

"Yes, I've been told so, Daddy Ben."

"On dis side up de ribber an' tudder side down de ribber 'cross de new
bridge. Wuth visitin' fo' strangers, sah."

I now felt entirely high and dry. I had attempted to enter into
conversation with him about the intimate affairs of a family to which he
felt that he belonged; and with perfect tact he had not only declined
to discuss them with me, but had delicately informed me that I was a
stranger and as such had better visit the phosphate works among the
other sights of Kings Port. No diplomat could have done it better; and
as I walled away from him I knew that he regarded me as an outsider, a
Northerner, belonging to a race hostile to his people; he had seen Mas'
John friendly with me, but that was Mas' John's affair. And so it
was that if the ladies had kept something from me, this cunning, old,
polite, coal-black African had kept everything from me.

If all the negroes in Kings Port were like Daddy Ben, Mrs. Gregory St.
Michael would not have spoken of having them "to deal with," and the
girl behind the counter would not have been thrown into such indignation
when she alluded to their conceit and ignorance. Daddy Ben had, so far
from being puffed up by the appointment in the Custom House, disapproved
of this. I had heard enough about the difference between the old and new
generations of the negro of Kings Port to believe it to be true, and I
had come to discern how evidently it lay at the bottom of many things
here: John Mayrant and his kind were a band united by a number of strong
ties, but by nothing so much as by their hatred of the modern negro
in their town. Yes, I was obliged to believe that the young Kings Port
African left to freedom and the ballot, was a worse African than his
slave parents; but this afternoon brought me a taste of it more pungent
than all the assurances in the world.

I bought my kettle-supporter, and learned from the robber who sold it
to me (Kings Port prices for "old things" are the most exorbitant that
I know anywhere) that a carpenter lived not far from Mrs. Trevise's
boarding-house, and that he would make for me the box in which I could
pack my various purchases.

"That is, if he's working this week," added the robber.

"What else would he be doing?"

"It may be his week for getting drunk on what he earned the week
before." An