How far he has caught or is capable of being imbued with the Yankee spirit of enterprise and industry, remains to be seen.  In some things he has already shown himself an apt scholar.  I notice, for instance, that he is about as industrious an office-seeker as the most patriotic among us, and that he learns with amazing ease and rapidity all the arts and wiles of the politicians.  He is versed in parades, mass meetings, caucuses, and will soon shine on the stump.  I observe, also, that he is not far behind us in the observance of the fashions, and that he is as good a church-goer, theatre-goer, and pleasure-seeker generally, as his means will allow.

As a bootblack or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype:  the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style.  As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, he has taken his degree.

On the other hand, I know cases among our colored brethren, plenty of them, of conscientious and well-directed effort and industry in the worthiest fields, in agriculture, in trade, in the mechanic arts, that show the colored man has in him all the best rudiments of a citizen of the States.

Lest my winter sunshine appear to have too many dark rays in it,—­buzzards, crows, and colored men,—­I hasten to add the brown and neutral tints; and maybe a red ray can be extracted from some of these hard, smooth, sharp-gritted roads that radiate from the National Capital.  Leading out of Washington there are several good roads that invite the pedestrian.  There is the road that leads west or northwest from Georgetown, the Tenallytown road, the very sight of which, on a sharp, lustrous winter Sunday, makes the feet tingle.  Where it cuts through a hill or high knoll, it is so red it fairly glows in the sunlight.  I’ll warrant you will kindle, and your own color will mount, if you resign yourself to it.  It will conduct you to the wild and rocky scenery of the upper Potomac, to Great Falls, and on to Harper’s Ferry, if your courage holds out.  Then there is the road that leads north over Meridian Hill, across Piny Branch, and on through the wood of Crystal Springs to Fort Stevens, and so into Maryland.  This is the proper route for an excursion in the spring to gather wild flowers, or in the fall for a nutting expedition, as it lays open some noble woods and a great variety of charming scenery; or for a musing moonlight saunter, say in December, when the Enchantress has folded and folded the world in her web, it is by all means the course to take.  Your staff rings on the hard ground; the road, a misty white belt, gleams and vanishes before you; the woods are cavernous and still; the fields lie in a lunar trance, and you will yourself return fairly mesmerized by the beauty of the scene.

Or you can bend your steps eastward over the Eastern Branch, up Good Hope Hill, and on till you strike the Marlborough pike, as a trio of us did that cold February Sunday we walked from Washington to Pumpkintown and back.