Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
and her baby were finally released from jail.
They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
of their crimes.
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