And let it not be supposed that I neglected that other class of poor creatures, called negroes, whom, although allowed the name, and most of the privileges of freemen, their white brethren refuse to take to their bosoms, merely because they have black faces, woolly heads, and an ill savour of body. For myself, verily, if they were not comely in my sight, nor agreeable to my nostrils, I said, "Heaven hath made them so;" and although my nephew Jonathan insisted that Heaven had done the same thing with other animals, and that, upon my principles, men should be as affectionate with pigs and badgers as they were with cats and lap-dogs, I perceived that they were my brethern, and that it became me to conquer the prejudices lying only in my eyes and nostrils. I girded my loins to the work, and verily, I prevailed over the weakness of the old Adam. Of a verity, I was the African's friend. But, oh! the wickedness of the world, and the ingratitude thereof! The heart of man is even as the soil of the earth, which, the more it is stirred up by cultivation, the more barren and worthless it becomes. It is as the fields of the Ancient Dominion, where, if a man soweth barley and corn, he shall reap a harvest of Jamestown weed, poke-berries, and scrub pines. It is as the bulldog that one feedeth with beef and other wholesome viands, who, the moment he has done his dinner, snaps, for his dessert, at the feeder's heel. It is as the tender flowers, which, in the winter-time, a man taketh from the cold, to warm, by night, in his chamber, and which smother him with foul air before morning. Verily, it was my lot to find, even as my nephew Jonathan had once foolishly contended, that even philanthropy is not secure from the sting of unthankfulness--that benevolence is, in one sense, the great parent of ingratitude--since it begets it. For a period of full seven months (for so long did I remain in Zachariah's body, after recoving my health), I laboured to do good to my fellows, and, verily, I laboured with might and main. Yet, had I toiled with the same energy to injure and oppress, I almost doubt whether I should have been rewarded with more manifold outpourings of wrath and fury. Verily, as I said before, the world is a wicked world, and I begin to doubt whether man can make it better. One of the first mishaps that befell me was of the following nature. Stepping one morning into the mayor's office, which was a favourite haunt with me, seeing that misery doth there greatly abound, I fell upon a man whom the magistrate was about to commit to jail, for being drunk and beating his wife and children, he being unable to pay the fine imposed upon him, and to find surety for his future good behaviour.