This may be to some extent owing to the fact that the organ of alimentativeness is more prominently formed in the negro’s make-up, than in that of almost any other people.
During several trips in the cars between Nashville and Columbia, I noticed that the boy who sold newspapers and supplied the passengers with fruit, had a basket filled with candy and cakes. The first time I was on his car he offered me the cakes, which I declined, but bought a paper. Watching him I observed that when colored persons entered the car, he would offer them the cakes which they seldom failed to purchase. One day as I took from him a newspaper, I inquired of him why he always offered cakes to the colored passengers. His reply was:—“Oh! they always buy something to eat.”
“Do they purchase more cakes than white people?”
“Yes,” was the response.
“Why do they buy your cakes and candy?” I asked.
“Well, sir, the colored people seem always to be hungry. Never see anything like it. They don’t buy papers, but they are always eating.”
Just then we stopped at Franklin, and three colored passengers came in. “Now,” continued the cake boy, “you’ll see how they’ll take the cakes,” and he started for them, but had to pass their seats to shut the door that had been left open. In going by, one of the men, impatient to get a cake, called, “Here, here, come here wid yer cakes.”
The peddler looked at me and laughed. He sold each one a cake, and yet it was not ten o’clock in the morning.
Not long since, in Massachusetts, I succeeded in getting a young man pardoned from our State prison, where he had been confined for more than ten years, and where he had learned a good trade.
I had already secured him a situation where he was to receive three dollars per day to commence with, with a prospect of an advance of wages.