Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

Any little change at our own door appears great to us, while the mightiest changes at a distance affect us little: if, however, we are disposed to weigh events in accordance with their intrinsic and real importance, we might compare the rising of the star of this extraordinary community with the lately recovered unity and independence of Italy, which has of late engrossed so much of our attention and interest. California at the present moment contains a population of between six and seven hundred thousand souls—Italy one of twenty-four millions. But if the old Nation and the new State were to try their strength against one another, I believe that this handful of keen-witted and intrepid men would go just where they pleased, and do just what they pleased in any part of Italy; while the Italians, however much of their strength they might put forth, would find themselves quite unable to do anything of the kind with California. How much would a Californian population of twenty-four millions make of Italy! They would have no armies of officials, no brigandage, no debt; their ships would sail on every sea; their influence would be felt all over Europe and throughout the world.

Coloured Waiters.

At Washington, as at Philadelphia and Baltimore, I found the waiters at the hotels were coloured men. I very much preferred this to having the white waiters I had fallen in with at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York: the latter, I thought, felt the degradation of their position. In America, waiting in hotels and railway cars, being domestic servants, and keeping barbers’ shops, are the only employments, with the exception of field-labour in the South, which are really left open to the coloured race. For a white man, therefore, to become a waiter at an hotel, is to sink himself to the level of the black. It is impossible to conceive a native American placing himself in such a situation. It is too poor an employment for him; it is of a servile character; and it is one which, in public opinion and by general practice, has been assigned to the African. Even here, in England, one pities the man whom circumstances have made a footman—when one sees the hosts of men occupied in this way in London and elsewhere, and compares what they are, and their sad prospects, with the fine manly fellows they might have been, and the independence they might have secured for themselves and their children in Canada, the Western States, Brazil, on the Rio Plata, in Natal, Australia or New Zealand, or in other places where the climate is fine, land a drug, and the only thing wanted is men who can work as Englishmen and their descendants alone can and do. The feelings, however, of commiseration with which in England we regard the man whom circumstances have placed in such a position, become in America dashed with somewhat of contempt for the whites who voluntarily place themselves in it. One does not feel in the least degree in this way towards the coloured waiters. It is not in the nature of the black that he should ever work hard enough to cultivate the soil, where the climate is such that the European is capable of labouring in it. He has it not in him to become, and never has become, a settler. One cannot imagine half-a-dozen negroes voluntarily submitting for half-a-dozen years to the incessant toil—the ploughing, the sowing, the weeding, the harvesting, the threshing, the cattle-tending of a Northern farm. It is not only that they are constitutionally lazy, but that they are also of too volatile a disposition for such a life. Nature, however, has fitted them for such employments as domestic service and waiting in hotels. In their case there is an obvious congruity between the employment and the person. When you thank the willing and cheerful black for changing your plate, or ministering in some way to your personal wants, and get in return the almost universal ‘Vara welcome,’ you do not feel in the slightest degree that a good and likely man is being wasted and degraded just for the promotion of your own comfort and convenience.

A Negro Masonic Funeral.

On a Sunday while I was at Washington, I saw a grand negro funeral. The deceased had been a minister in one of their churches, and also a Freemason. He was therefore buried with Masonic honours. They chose for the procession the streets in which, and the day and the hour of the day when, there would be most people to witness it. The order was as follows:—First came a negro on horseback to open the way; then a powerful band. These were succeeded by two hundred Masons, all well dressed, with aprons, scarves, and badges. After these the corpse in a handsome coffin. In order that this might be completely seen, the sides of the hearse were of plate-glass. The corpse was followed by twenty carriages, each drawn by two horses. These carriages contained the ladies of the cortége. I saw no attempt among them, by drawing down blinds or the use of the handkerchief, to conceal their grief. Their bearing, I rather thought, indicated the presence in their sable breasts of the very ancient desire to see and be seen. No whites took any part in the funeral. A great many, however, had assembled to see it pass, all of whom appeared to behave very decorously. There was evidently a great effort on the part of the blacks to appear to advantage. It was a curious and interesting sight. Some of the mulattoes were tall and good-looking, but far the greater part of them were intensely ugly. In the procession was every shade of colour, from ebony to what might have easily passed for the complexion of an European; for in the United States not even light hair and blue eyes with a fair skin can rescue from social exclusion the man who is known to have in his veins a drop of negro blood.

Wherever in the South I mentioned this negro funeral, the same remark was made on the Freemasonry of the negroes. Everyone professed himself ignorant of how the negroes had come by it. No one knew who had admitted them; and no one would acknowledge them as brother-Masons.

On going over the Smithsonian Museum, I was much struck by the superiority of the birds of America to those of Europe in the architectural skill and beauty of their nests.

While I was at Washington, a bill was before Congress for depriving of the franchise every father whose children (up to a certain age) did not attend school at least twelve weeks each year.

It was here that I first saw something of the Freedman’s Bureau. Probably in the first days of emancipation some agency was needed for regulating the movements of the negroes, and for supplying them with information as to their newly acquired rights. I am, however, disposed to think that so extensive a department as this bureau was altogether a mistake. It has cost much, and, as far as I could judge, done some harm and very little good. But of that anon: I will only speak now of my visit to one of the coloured schools I found at Washington under its superintendence. Like all the American schools I visited in towns, it was graded; that is, as we should express it, the school was divided into classes, each class having its own teacher and its own school-room, and being in every particular entirely distinct and separate from all the rest. There were about four hundred children on the books, and the usual number, about fifty, in each grade. It is impossible to exaggerate the advantages of this method of teaching. Each teacher has but one class; therefore the whole of the school-time is actually and actively employed in teaching. One class is not idle while the teacher is attending to another. No child is neglected. All parts of the school are equally cared for. There is much emulation among the teachers, each desiring that his part in the general system shall be done well. Each teacher having only one step or grade to teach, perfects himself in it, and teaches it thoroughly. When it has been completely mastered, the child is passed on to the teacher of the next step or grade, who in his turn goes through the same process; till at last the child, at the end of three years—for each grade requires six months—leaves the school, having passed through all it professes to teach, and generally having acquired it all thoroughly.

Coloured Schools.