The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
and body together; that it was steal or perish.
It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
than have you think I would take anything."
The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
humor, that bane of black folk.
Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
his copying.
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