That His hour and the power of light were expected to come in due time is implied, though, with eloquent fitness, not expressed. So all people, while under the dominion of evil passions and filthy lusts, may look forward, if so disposed, to the Saviour's hour, when, upon their invitation, those lusts shall be driven out and He with His angelic following shall enter in and sup with them.

XI.

The following proverb is not strictly of Haytian origin, though I had never happened to hear it till I heard it in Hayti:

QUAND VOUS MANGÉ AVEC DIABLE, TIEMBÉ

CUILLER VOUS LONG.

When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon.

Shakspeare uses this proverb in a way to justify the belief that in this time it was too familiar and commonplace to be quoted in full.

Stephano. Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy! mercy! This is a devil, and no mon

ster; I will leave him; I have no long spoon." 1

The devil has lost much of the personal consideration, if not the influence, which he used to enjoy in earlier ages, and hence the comparative disuse of this proverb, except among people where the belief in the actual existence of a personal devil to be propitiated prevails, as in Hayti and among all African races, and among some Christian sects. It is a caution to those who accept the hospitality or favors of rogues. It does not take the high and only safe ground, which is to have no transactions with Satan; to make no compromise with evil. If it did, it would probably have lacked one of the essential elements of a proverb-general, popular acceptation;—for a proverb comes to its shape like a cobble-stone, by long and constant attrition. The average man thinks himself a little smarter than Satan, and that he can accept Satan's hospitality without

1 Tempest, Act II. Scene 2.

returning it; that he can have just one or perhaps two transactions with the Prince of Evil, or operate with him for a limited period, and then stop. Einmal keinmal, say the Germans: Once is never; that is, it is idle to think of doing a wrong thing only once. No one ever deliberately entered into a single transaction with Satan that did not soon enter into another.

The necessity, however, of great wariness in our dealings with the Evil One, which the length of the spoon imports, rather than the wiser policy of rejecting all his overtures and the still wiser policy of making flagrant war upon them, expresses the popular sense both of the danger of such dealings and the occasional necessity for them.

No one has had much to do with slaves or with any people whose social and political liberties were seriously abridged, without remarking a corresponding disposition. to seek a partial indemnification for their privations through falsehood, or through theft, which is a form of falsehood. It is

safe to say that in those countries in which private rights and property are least secure, a man's social standing is least compromised by disingenuousness.

"Le même jour qui met un homme libre aux fers
Lui ravié la moiti de sa virtue première."'

It does not follow, however, that the slave is really any less truthful than the master though he may tell more lies. If a lie were necessary to save him from a flogging, and if, as in the slave's case, there were no public sentiment to which he is obliged to pay homage, how many masters could hesitate longer than their slaves to take refuge in falsehood? Many have deplored Galileo's weakness when stretched upon the rack of the Inquisition who would have endured far less even than the great Etruscan for the truth.

As we become independent of the world, whether by having the means of gratifying our carnal appetites or by the gradual ex

1 The day which puts a free man in irons deprives him of half his virtue.

tinction of such of them as depend on the coöperation or forbearance of our fellowcreatures, lying will become a more hateful offense, and truthfulness a more indispensable condition of worldly esteem. So long, however, as we are sustained in the discharge of our duty only by a sense of worldly prudence, the difference among us, after all, is only a difference in the length of the spoon which we use at the devil's table.

This proverb is also suggestive of another that is more familiar, and which, Quintillian tells us, was old in his day:

Liars should have long memories.

XII.

OUS PAS CAPABLE MANGER GUMBO AVEC NION DOIGT.

You never eat gumbo with one finger.

Spoons and forks are luxuries with which the Haytian peasants are not familiar, and they eat their gumbo (we call it okra) with two fingers. It would be as difficult to eat