felt undoubtedly very great affection; and as time passed and Mr. H----
continued implacable, her indignation grew and her wrath waxed exceeding
strong. It came to pass that the cousin one night fared over-sumptuously
on cold cabbage and beans, and when the mists of dawn had fled she too
had left to join her friends over Jordan.

Presently a messenger came from Mr. H----: "Would Mrs. S---- be so kind
as to allow Judy to come over and prepare the body for burial?"--that
being one of Judy's specialties.

The family was at table when the message was delivered, and Judy was
serving cakes and muffins, with short parentheses sacred to the memory
of her cousin. Mrs. S---- had respected her affliction and given her
permission to retire, but Judy continued to return with more cakes and
more muffins, and, as soon as they were handed, to retire to a corner
with her apron at her eyes, even after Mr. H----'s message had been
delivered and she had been told to go. During one of her temporary
absences Mr. S---- asked his wife, "Why don't you tell her to go, if she
is going? It seems nobody can be 'laid out' without Judy, but any of the
rest can wait at table."

"But this is her cousin, and she may not wish to perform so trying a
service; so I will leave it to her.--Judy, if you prefer not going to
Mr. H----'s just at present, I will send word that I cannot spare you."

Judy threw her apron over her head with a vari-toned cry issued in the
keys of grief, anger and scorn. Then she stiffened her neck and rolled
her eyes from side to side till the whites glistened again. "Go dar,
indeed!" she indignantly exclaimed. "Ef I couldn't go on de lot to see
my own dear cousin, I know I ain't gwine to dress up his dead nigger!"

The leading trait of the negro is his instability, his superficiality.
It is superlative. His emotions are as easily aroused and as evanescent
as those of children, flowing in a noisy and tumultuous current, but
utterly without depth and volatile as ether. To this may in a measure be
attributed his lack of progress, but I doubt whether he be capable of
any high order of development without an infusion of Caucasian blood
which will dissipate his simian type, improving the shape of his
retreating forehead, changing the contour of his heavy jaw, giving
weight and measurement to his now inferior and inactive brain. Since the
surrender and the institution of public schools, and the opportunities
for improvement afforded him