In any case, it may safely be affirmed that the Negro is not retrograding. On the Sea Islands, where it has been reported that the Negroes had sunk to savagery, where on one small island a white face had not been seen for ten years, there is undoubtedly a widespread belief in magic, or what a fluent colored preacher, in a discourse apparently intended for white ears, referred to as "Hindooism." On such subjects the Negroes are reticent; but no evidence of paganism is visible to long-time residents on the islands. When it comes to fortune-telling and charms, and a fetich that will insure you against having your mortgage foreclosed, about the same thing may be found among otherwise intelligent people in any Northern city. Degradation is frequent; and marital relations are loose on the islands, though no more so than on the plantations of Mississippi, or among the Negroes of the cities of Georgia. The population is in general healthier than on the mainland, though much exposed to severe malaria. Two or three of the African superstitions do survive; one is that you must always keep a door open during the day so that you may not shut the bad spirit in with you; but at night doors and shutters must be closed to keep the spirit out. Another superstition is the "Basket-name," which is the plague of the Northern teachers, who are a long time in learning that Louisa's basket name is "Chug," or that when you call Ezra, "Mantchey" will come. Churches of various denominations are kept up, and, together with the various lodges, furnish the principal social life of the people. To be sure they often have African dances at their religious services; but these are very like the Shaker dances, which can hardly be called pagan worship. The error as to the progress of the Negro arises both from an unfounded notion of the virtues and the civilization of the Negroes under slavery, and an equally unfounded idea that the average conditions of the Negro to-day are hopeless. The Negro was busier in slavery times than now because there was always the whip in the background, but there is no reason to suppose that his average annual product was as great as that of the present freeman. Falsehood, thriftlessness, and immorality are the charges which were constantly brought against the slaves, both by outsiders and by their own masters. Judged by the standards which the white man most readily applies to himself--namely, the proportion of educated and progressive men and women, the average amount of property, the interest in the welfare of the race--there is no reason to doubt that the Negro is higher up than he was half a century ago.