ches. The case of the convert who was asked by his
pastor, a week after his admission to the church, if he had stolen a
chicken since his conversion, and who carefully concealed a stolen duck
under his coat while he assured the good man that he had not, is an
exaggerated one of course, but it is quoted as a good story in almost
every State and city in the Union.

Mr. Sala objects very much to judging a whole class of people by a few
street-corner or cross-road loungers. The negro he found to be
superstitious, just as we find them to-day. Even educated negroes are
apt to give credence to many stories which, on the face of them, appear
ridiculous. The words "Hoodoo" and "Mascot" have a meaning among these
people of which we have only a dim conception, and when sickness enters
a family the aid of an alleged doctor, who is often a charlatan of the
worst character, is apt to be sought. It will take several generations
to work out this characteristic, and perhaps the greatest complaint the
colored race has against those who formerly held them in subjection, is
the way in which voodoo and supernatural stories were told ignorant
slaves with a view to frightening them into obedience, and inciting them
to extra exertions.

For absolute ignorance and apparent lack of human understanding, the
negro loafer to be found around some of our Southern towns and depots
may be quoted as a signal and quite amusing example. The hat, as Mr.
Sala humorously puts it, resembles an inverted coal scuttle or bucket
without handles, and pierced by many holes. It is something like the
bonnet of a Brobdingnagian Quakeress, huge and flapped and battered, and
fearful to look upon.

"Hang all this equipment," this interesting writer goes on to say, "on
the limbs of a tall negro of any age between sixteen and sixty, and then
let him stand close to the scaffold-like platform of the depot shanty
and let him loaf. His attitude is one of complete and apathetic
immobility. He does not grin. He may be chewing, but he does not smoke.
He does not beg; at least in so far as I observed him he stood in no
posture and assumed no gestures belonging to the mendicant. He looms at
you with a dull, stony, preoccupied gaze, as though his thoughts were a
thousand miles away in the unknown land; while once in every quarter of
an hour or so he woke up to a momentary consciousness that he was a
thing neither rich nor rare, and so wondered how in thunder he got
there. He is a