Norfolk is the place above all others, where the “old-Verginny-never-tire” colored people of the olden time may be found in their purity. Here nearly everybody lives out of doors in the warm weather. This is not confined to the blacks. On the sidewalks, in front of the best hotels, under the awnings at store-doors, on the door-sills of private houses, and on the curbstones in the streets, may be seen people of all classes. But the blacks especially give the inside of the house a wide berth in the summer.

I went to the market, for I always like to visit the markets on Saturday, for there you see “life among the lowly,” as you see it nowhere else. Colored men and women have a respectable number of stalls in the Norfolk market, the management of which does them great credit.

But the costermongers, or street-venders, are the men of music. “Here’s yer nice vegables—green corn, butter beans, taters, Irish taters, new, jess bin digged; come an’ get ’em while dey is fresh. Now’s yer time; squash, Calafony quash, bess in de worl’; come an’ git ’em now; it’ll be Sunday termorrer, an’ I’ll be gone to church. Big fat Mexican peas, marrer fat squash, Protestant squash, good Catholic vegables of all kinds.”

Just then the vender broke forth in a most musical voice:

This song, given in his inimitable manner, drew the women to the windows, and the crowd around the vegetable man in the street, and he soon disposed of the contents of his cart. Other venders who “toted” their commodities about in baskets on their heads, took advantage of the musical man’s company to sell their own goods. A woman with some really fine strawberries, put forth her claims in a very interesting song; the interest, however, centered more upon the manner than the matter:—

Upon the whole, the colored man of Virginia is a very favorable physical specimen of his race; and he has peculiarly fine, urbane manners. A stranger judging from the surface of life here, would undoubtedly say that that they were a happy, well-to-do people. Perhaps, also, he might say: “Ah, I see. The negro is the same everywhere—a hewer of wood, a peddler of vegetables, a wearer of the waiter’s white apron. Freedom has not altered his status.”

Such a judgment would be a very hasty one. Nations are not educated in twenty years. There are certain white men who naturally gravitate also to these positions; and we must remember that it is only the present generation of negroes who have been able to appropriate any share of the nobler blessings of freedom. But the colored boys and girls of Virginia are to-day vastly different from what the colored boys and girls of fifteen or twenty years ago were. The advancement and improvement is so great that it is not unreasonable to predict from it a very satisfactory future.

The negro population here are greatly in the majority, and formerly sent a member of their own color to the State Senate, but through bribery and ballot-box stuffing, a white Senator is now in Richmond. One negro here at a late election sold his vote for a barrel of sugar. After he had voted and taken his sugar home, he found it to be a barrel of sand. I learn that his neighbors turned the laugh upon him, and made him treat the whole company, which cost him five dollars.

I would not have it supposed from what I have said about the general condition of the blacks in Virginia that there are none of a higher grade. Far from it, for some of the best mechanics in the State are colored men. In Richmond and Petersburg they have stores and carry on considerable trade, both with the whites and their own race. They are doing a great deal for education; many send their sons and daughters North and West for better advantages; and they are building some of the finest churches in this State. The Second Baptist Church here pulled down a comparatively new and fine structure, last year, to replace it with a more splendid place of worship, simply because a rival church of the same denomination had surpassed them. I viewed the new edifice, and feel confident it will compare favorably with any church on the Back Bay, Boston.

The new building will seat three thousand persons, and will cost, exclusive of the ground, one hundred thousand dollars, all the brick and wood work of which is being done by colored men.