i8 



WINTER SUNSHINE. 



liar, rambling, elastic gait, taking advantage of the short 

 cuts and threading the country with paths and by- 

 ways. I doubt if the colored man can compete with 

 his white brother as a walker ; his foot is too flat and 

 the calves of his legs too small, but he is certainly the 

 most picturesque traveller 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 imaginary 

 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 freed- 

 man is a successful trapper and hunter and has by na- 

 ture an insight into these things. I frequently see him 

 in market or on his way thither with a tame 'possum 

 clinging timidly to his shoulders, or a young coon or 

 fox led by a chain. Indeed 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 na- 



