nst his enemy. The papers have interviewed both parties, and
confidently expect a fatal issue.

Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through him
the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen with a vote,
consequently both political parties play with him. But that is neither
here nor there. He will commit in one meal every betise that a senllion
fresh from the plow-tail is capable of, and he will continue to repeat
those faults. He is as complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending,
bungle-fisted fool as any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her
establishment. But he is according to law a free and independent
citizen--consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he alone, in
this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman doesn't count).

He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the pay.
Now, God and his father's fate made him intellectually inferior to the
Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves tables by accident--as
a sort of amusement. He wishes you to understand this little fact. You
wish to eat your meals, and, if possible, to have them properly served.
He is a big, black, vain baby and a man rolled into one.

A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted
something else, demanded information about India. I gave him some facts
about wages.

"Oh, hell!" said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars for a
month."

Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself
to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called them--this woolly
one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage
since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders
that he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes.
He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race
type had remained the same throughout his generations. And the room was
full of other races--some that looked exactly like Gallas (but the
trade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some duplicates of
Cameroon heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen wore evening dress.

The American does not consider little matters of descent, though by this
time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity." As a general rule
he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about him
that are not pretty. There are six million negroes, more or less, in
the States, and they are increas