But the clouds of dust do not prevent our sooty neighbors from spading the gardens, and just now they are engaged in turning up the soil with their blades in that gentle, easy manner which none but a negro knows how to practice. Washington is a Southern city in every sense of the word. It may have been partially redeemed by Yankee thrift during the war, but it is now fast sinking back to its original condition as it was in the days of the “old regime.” Slavery is dead, it is true, but the black man is not a citizen. He is the humblest laborer in the vineyard. But hard as their lot appears, it is far preferable to hopeless slavery; and though thousands of lives of the present generation may be sacrificed upon the altar of freedom, a new future awaits them; and if their Moses has changed his mind, or concluded that he has other work to do, they must bide their time, and raise up a leader of their own race and color, for the Lord has ordained that every people shall work out their own salvation. This is not a political view of the subject, only a feeble woman’s, who can do nothing for the freedman but utter shriek after shriek for him, which has proved just as efficient as anything that has been done in various quarters. Congress has done all it could do; the President has promised to be their “Moses,” and the negro persists in suffering. Who is to blame for it? Do they not bring their sufferings upon their own heads? What business have they to be born? Isn’t it a crime of the darkest dye? I leave this painful subject for wiser heads to explain, but should anything new transpire in regard to it, I shall make haste to inform my readers at the earliest moment. Since the grand speech from the White House one is astonished at the sudden development of a spirit which was supposed to have collapsed with the rebellion. Great flaunting pictures of General Lee appear at conspicuous places to attract the attention of passers-by. He has taken Washington at last. One prominent bookstore balances his picture by that of General Grant; but a certain other bookstore betrays its ideas very ridiculously by a set of pictures--General Washington being in the center, Jeff Davis on one side and Jesus Christ on the other! Had the shopkeeper displayed the picture of our lamented Lincoln side by side with the assassin Booth my astonishment would have been no greater. Does the community think treason a crime when such things are allowed in our midst? We hear of no more balls, levees or receptions.