150 THE KOIiTJlEBN MOUNTAINS. 



to the body, and sometliiiig of clieerfulness, self-help, inde- 

 pendence to the spirit. If the Saturnalia be prolonged too 

 far, and run, as they seem inclined to run, into brutality and 

 licence, those stern laws of JSTature which men call poli- 

 tical economy will pull the Negro up short, and waken him 

 out of his dream, soon enough and sliarply enough a 

 "judgment " by which the wise will profit and be preserved, 

 while the fools only will be destroyed. And meanwhile, 

 what if in these Saturnalia (as in Eome of old) the new 

 sense of independence manifests itself in somewhat of self- 

 assertion and rudeness, often in insolence, especially dis- 

 agreeable, because deliberate ? What if " You call me black 

 fellow ? I mash you white face in," were the first words one 

 heard at St. Thomas's from a Negro, on being asked, civilly 

 enough, by a sailor to cast off from a boat to which he had 

 no right to be holding on ? What if a Negro now and then 

 addresses you as simple " Buccra," while he expects you to 

 call him " Sir ; " or if a Negro woman, on being begged by an 

 English lady to call to another Negro woman, answers at 

 last, after long pretences not to hear, " You coloured lady ! 

 you hear dis white woman a wanting of you ? " Let it be. 

 We white people bullied these black people quite enough for 

 three hundred years, to be able to allow them to play (for it 

 is no more) at bullying us. As long as the Negros are 

 decently loyal and peaceable, and do not murder their 



