resting passages of local history. To his surprise he found that the
old man had but one idea. That idea was that it was his duty to take
care of and preserve his old master's grave. When the war broke out, the
old hero was the body-servant or valet of a man, who, from the very
first, was in the thick of the fight against the North. The colored man
followed his soldier-master from place to place, and when a Northern
bullet put an end to the career of the master, the servant reverently
conveyed the body back to the old home, superintended the interment, and
commenced a daily routine of watching, which for more than thirty years
he had never varied.

All the relatives of the deceased had left the neighborhood years
before, and the faithful old negro was the only one left to watch over
the grave and keep the flowers that were growing on it in good
condition. As far as could be learned from local gossip, the old fellow
had no visible means of subsistence, securing what little he needed to
eat in exchange for odd jobs around neighboring houses. No one seemed to
know where he slept, or seemed to regard the matter as of any
consequence. There was about the jet black hero, however, an air of
absolute happiness, added to an obvious sense of pride at the
performance of his self-imposed and very loving task.

Instances of this kind could be multiplied almost without end. The negro
as a free man and citizen retains many of the most prominent
characteristics which marked his career in the days before the war. Now
and again one hears of a negro committing suicide. Such an event,
however, is almost as rare as resignation of an office-holder or the
death of an annuitant. Indifference to suffering and a keen appreciation
of pleasure, make prolonged grief very unusual among Afro-Americans, and
in consequence their lives are comparatively joyous.

One has to go down South to appreciate the colored man as he really is.
In the North he is apt to imitate the white man so much that he loses
his unique personality. In the Southern States, however, he can be found
in all his original glory. Here he can be regarded as a survival of
preceding generations. In the South, before the war, the truism that
there is dignity in toil was scarcely appreciated at its full worth. The
negro understood, as if by instinct, that he ought to work for his white
master, and that duties of every kind in the field, on the road and in
the house, should be performed