WINTER SUNSHINE 11 



a walker; his foot is too flat and the calves of his 

 legs too small, but he is certainly the most pic 

 turesque traveler to be seen on the road. He bends 

 his knees more than the white man, and oscillates 

 more to and fro, or from side to side. The imagi 

 nary line which his head describes is full of deep 

 and long undulations. Even the boys and young 

 men sway as if bearing a burden. 



Along the fences and by the woods I come upon 

 their snares, dead-falls, and rude box-traps. The 

 freedman is a successful trapper and hunter, and 

 has by nature an insight into these things. I fre 

 quently see him in market or on his way thither 

 with a tame 'possum clinging timidly to his shoul 

 ders, or a young coon or fox led by a chain. In 

 deed, the colored man behaves precisely like the 

 rude unsophisticated peasant that he is, and there 

 is fully as much virtue in him, using the word in 

 its true sense, as in the white peasant; indeed, 

 much more than in the poor whites who grew up 

 by his side; while there is often a benignity and a 

 depth of human experience and sympathy about 

 some of these dark faces that comes home to one 

 like the best one sees in art or reads in books. 



One touch of nature makes all the world akin, 

 and there is certainly a touch of nature about the 

 colored man; indeed, I had almost said, of Anglo- 

 Saxon nature. They have the quaintness and home 

 liness of the simple English stock. I seem to see 

 my grandfather and grandmother in the ways and 

 doings of these old "uncles" and "aunties;" in- 



