NEGRO SUSPICION.
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to see some amendment in the rising generation, and we shall do so, I feel assured, if their old relations do not poison their minds, by telling them, because they are taught to read and write, it will be a degradation for them to work in a cane-field. In the latter part of the preceding chapter, an account was given of their various superstitions ; the next strong trait in their character is suspicion. They can seldom be brought to think you have an eye to their interest in any new arrangement you may make with them in their domestic concerns. If you address them with kindness, they suspect you have some motive for so doing, prejudicial to their welfare. Should you inquire after their living, the quantity of live-stock they keep, or any other little domestic comfort, or, indeed, ask them where they live, or who they work for, the same thoughts possess their mind. It is strange, too, that they will hardly ever sell any of their poultry or meat, or, indeed, anything else they may have to dispose of, to the proprietor or manager residing upon the same estate as themselves. No ! they prefer bringing it miles, perhaps, to town, and probably getting less for it, than if they had disposed of it to their masters. If asked to do so, they commonly find some excuse ; it is too old or too young, or too fat or too lean, or they cannot catch it, or else they want it for themselves. This singular practice arises from suspicion ; they are fearful of letting their masters know what their resources are, and what they do with their property. For this reason, they prefer going to a dark shop to purchase what they want. They do not like to be recognised by any one while thus employed ; nor for any one to know how much money they lay out, or what they buy. There are some retail shops, or stores, as they are called in the West Indian idiom, which are scarcely six feet high, and which of course are very dark and uncomfortable ; yet, as unpleasant as these stores or shops may look to the eye, they are for that very reason frequented by the negroes. I am,* in this part of my subject, more particularly speaking of the