XXIX.

LIANE YAMME CA MARER YAMME.

The yam vines bind the yam.

Those who lead or beguile the innocent into danger, physical or moral; who, like Haman, build gibbets for the unoffending, are sure, sooner or later, to become the victims of their own perfidy. "Whoso diggeth a pit," says Solomon, "shall fall therein and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him."

He is "taken in his own toils."

Like Acteon, he is eaten by his own dogs. He is hoist by his own petard.

Punishment is a cripple, says a Spanish proverb, but it arrives.

Every stage and condition of life has limitations and conditions peculiar to it. Youth yearns for the strength of manhood, not suspecting that the vigor of manhood is mortgaged as soon as developed to new and pro

1 Proverbs, xxvi: 27.

portionate service. The poor fancy that the wealth which seems far from giving happiness to a neighbor, if theirs, would leave them nothing to desire. When they acquire wealth, power, or station, they either find it involves corresponding duties and cares, or that it tempts to self-indulgence, weakens the moral energies, impairs the health, provokes jealousy and envy, and in a thousand ways eats away the pleasure with which, when seen through the spectrum of poverty or obscurity, it seems so prolific.

"Vois ce fleuve," said Béranger, pointing to the Loire," plus il monte, plus il est troublé.” 1 No one has turned his experience of life to much account who has not realized that happiness, like the yam, is nourished and sustained by those providential restrictions and limitations which grow with its growth and strengthen with its strength, and which, by revealing to us, put us on our guard against, our besetting sins and infirmities.

1 See this river (the Loire); the more it swells the more it is troubled.

XXX.

MACAQUE CONNAITE QUI BOIS LI CA MONTER. The monkey knows what tree to climb.

XXXI.

COCHON MARON CONNAITE QUI BOIS LI FROTTE.1 The wild hog knows what wood he rubs against. Both these proverbs no doubt owe their currency, if not their origin, to slavery. Such aphorisms would spring naturally to the lips of the oppressed and dependent. People are rarely insolent or overbearing to those who can chastise them. Who experiences this earlier or more frequently than those who have no rights which a white man is bound to respect?" Unhappily, when slavery shall cease in the world, there is little chance that these proverbs will

'This proverb most likely orignated with the bucaneers who knew the habits of the wild hog, the hunting of which had mostly ceased before the slaves became nu. merous in Hayti. It is still often used there in the manner you describe, l'arbre being substituted for bois.Hunt.

become obsolete.

The Spaniards have a

proverb of substantially the same import:

Bien sabe el asno en cuya cara rebuzna.1 We have also in English another like unto it:

The cat knows whose lips she licks.

XXXII.

JARDIN LOIN, GUMBO GATE.

The garden far, the gumbo (ochra) spoils.

Those who have lived among slaves know the difficulty of having a garden. The propensity of these dependents to forage upon the vegetables and poultry of the proprietary class is incurable. To this is owing in a great measure the fact that, with manifold advantages of soil, of climate, and of cheap labor, such a thing as a good garden in the slave states of America was almost unknown. In the days of slavery, strawberries and peas were rarely seen in the Charleston market, though the richest city

'The ass knows whose face he brays.

for its population in all the slave states. Now for miles around Charleston the land is a continuous market garden.

The negro's plea for treating his master's fruit as his own is the same as that which the Hebrews may be supposed to have used when reproached with appropriating to their own use the jewelry of their Egyptian taskmasters. A garden, therefore, not under the immediate and watchful eye of the master, is apt to prove unprofitable property.

It is your own fault, says an English moralist, if your neglected wife deceives you. Poor Richard says:

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

Not to oversee workmen is to leave them with

your purse open.

He that by the plow would thrive.

Himself must either hold or drive.

The Italians have a proverb, borrowed, however, from the Greek, which teaches the same lesson :

The master's eye makes the horse fat.