ought to in the event of there being any
convenient mill pond at hand. But the better class darkeys, who have
been domestic slaves in Baltimore families, seemed to retain all their
own affectionate obsequiousness of manner and respectful familiarity.
Again, in Washington, the black man and his congeners seemed to be doing
remarkably well. At one of the quietest, most elegant and most
comfortable hotels in the Federal Capital, I found the establishment
conducted by a colored man, all of whose employes, from the clerks in
the office to the waiters and chambermaids, were colored. Our
chambermaid was a delightful old lady, and insisted ere we left that we
should give her a receipt for a real old English Christmas plum pudding.

"But these were not the mill pond folk of whom I was in quest. They were
of the South, as an Irishman in London is of Ireland, but not in it. I
had a craving to see whether any of the social ashes of slavery lived
their wonted fires. Away down South was the real object of my mission,
and in pursuit of that mission I went on to Richmond."

Mr. Sala proceeds to give a most amusing account of his ride from New
York to Richmond, with various criticisms of sleeping-car accommodation,
heartily endorsed by all American travelers who have read them. Arriving
at Richmond he asked the usual question: "Is not the negro idle,
thriftless and thievish?" From time immemorial it has been asserted that
the laws of meum and tuum have no meaning for the colored man. It is a
joke current in more than one American city, that the police have
standing orders to arrest every negro seen carrying a turkey or a
chicken along the street. In other words, the funny man would have us
believe that the innate love of poultry in the Ethiopian's breast is so
great that the chances are against his having been possessed of
sufficient force of character to pass a store or market where any birds
were exposed for sale and not watched.

It is doubtless a libel on the colored race to state that even the
majority of its members are chicken thieves by descent rather than
inclination, just as it is a libel on their religion to insinuate that a
colored camp meeting is almost certain to involve severe inroads into
the chicken coops and roosts of the neighboring farmers. Certain it is,
however, that chicken stealing is one of the most dangerous causes of
backsliding on the part of colored converts and enthusiastic singers of
hymns in negro chur