JACOB 
He was old and withered and black-black as ebony or as a 
well-polished boot. He never seemed to do anything in 
his garden, as* pass when I would at the end of the rutty 
lane, I was sure to see him crouching on his doorstep in 
the shadow of his Banana with its great wind-torn emerald 
leaves. There were always some of his apparently multi- 
tudinous descendants busy in the tiny compound, and some- 
how or other enough Yams and other roots were gathered 
together to feed the tribe, probably with a good deal of 
unrecognised help from the neighbouring fields of master’s 
Bananas and Cocoa. The hut was low and tumble-to- 
pieces in appearance, but beautified by the gorgeous red 
and yellow plumes of the “ Pride of Barbados,” which 
grew tall and luxuriant by the door. There were tangled 
Yam-vines and Aralias, many-coloured Cannas, a Nutmeg- 
tree with its quaint pear-shaped fruit and sweetest of 
flowers, and a perfect little thicket of “ Coffee-rose ” bushes, 
their white Gardenia-like flowers perfuming the air heavily. 
I stopped to admire a bronze-hued baby one day playing 
under the Orange-trees, wholly naked save for a string of 
blue beads encircling its rounded neck. My admiration of 
his grandchild pleased old Jacob, and he vouchsafed a few 
civil words, rather to the doubting satisfaction of my escort, 
a stalwart but very superstitious negro, who feared “ over- 
looking ” by one reputed an Obi man, and feared and 
respected as much as a “ wise woman ” used to be in an 
English village, or a “ spae wife ” in a Scotch one, not so 
very long ago. The wonderful knowledge of the good and 
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