Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER m ON A LEE SHORE In Barbados it is considered degrading for a white man to do manual labor. Occasionally you will find a white man working at a trade, or serving on the police force, or making a living by catching flying fish, but they are socially ostracized. They must associate with the negroes, who are expected to do all the laborious work on the island. A white man's work is to manage a sugar plantation, to be a clerk in an office or store, or to follow the profession of a minister, doctor, or lawyer. So also with the women, with the exception of a few who serve behind the counters of the largest clothing stores. They live lives of idleness, with negro servants at every beck and call. As a boy I was impressed with the idea that sailors were the only white men who were allowed to labor aboard their ships, and were still thought respectable. Perhapsmy brothers being sailors created the impression. Howbeit, the next morning after landing in Bermuda, when I started with a letter in my pocket from my mother to find Captain Hill's house, the strangest thing to me was to see the familiarity that existed between the white and black Bermudians. Colored men meeting white men on the street would address them by their first names, without prefixing the Barbados title of " Mas- sah." Along the road I could look over the stone walls, and there see the whites and blacks working side by side in the onion and potato fields. To cap it all, after finding Captain Hill and receiving from him the welcome of his big, fond heart, I was introduced to the negro boys in that part of Port Koyal Parish as only Harry King. I soon became acquainted with them, and for five weeks I worked cheerfully with them, weeding onions in Captain Hill's gardens. One morning, when not yet six weeks in...