he mincing drollery with which she used this fine phrase brought
another peal of laughter. Nobody tried to guess.

"I gwan tell you," said the _marchande_; "'t is becyaze dey got a 'fixed
wuckin' class.'" She sputtered and giggled with the general ha, ha. "Oh,
ole Clemence kin talk proctah, yass!"

She made a gesture for attention.

"D' y' ebber yeh w'at de cya'ge-hoss say w'en 'e see de cyaht-hoss tu'n
loose in de sem pawstu'e wid he, an' knowed dat some'ow de cyaht gotteh
be haul'? W'y 'e jiz snawt an' kick up 'is heel'"--she suited the action
to the word--"an' tah' roun' de fiel' an' prance up to de fence an' say:
'Whoopy! shoo! shoo! dis yeh country gittin' _too_ free!'"

"Oh," she resumed, as soon as she could be heard, "white folks is werry
kine. Dey wants us to b'lieb we happy--dey _wants to b'lieb_ we is. W'y,
you know, dey 'bleeged to b'lieb it--fo' dey own cyumfut. 'Tis de sem
weh wid de preache's; dey buil' we ow own sep'ate meet'n-houses; dey
b'liebs us lak it de bess, an' dey _knows_ dey lak it de bess."

The laugh at this was mostly her own. It is not a laughable sight to see
the comfortable fractions of Christian communities everywhere striving,
with sincere, pious, well-meant, criminal benevolence, to make their
poor brethren contented with the ditch. Nor does it become so to see
these efforts meet, or seem to meet, some degree of success. Happily man
cannot so place his brother that his misery will continue unmitigated.
You may dwarf a man to the mere stump of what he ought to be, and yet he
will put out green leaves. "Free from care," we benignly observe of the
dwarfed classes of society; but we forget, or have never thought, what a
crime we commit when we rob men and women of their cares.

To Clemence the order of society was nothing. No upheaval could reach to
the depth to which she was sunk. It is true, she was one of the
population. She had certain affections toward people and places; but
they were not of a consuming sort.

As for us, our feelings, our sentiments, affections, etc., are fine and
keen, delicate and many; what we call refined. Why? Because we get them
as we get our old swords and gems and laces--from our grandsires,
mothers, and all. Refined they are--after centuries of refining. But the
feelings handed down to Clemence had come through ages of African
savagery; through fires that do not refine, but that blunt and blast and
blacken and char; starvation, gluttony, drunkenness, th