His voice failing more and more, the little he said was with difficulty understood. Once or twice, those who stood around him caught hold of something like our Saviour's words: "Many are called, but few chosen." About an hour before he died, his voice wholly failed. He was awhile restless and uneasy, till, turning his head on his pillow, he found an easier posture, and lay perfectly quiet.
About seven in the evening of the day on which he was brought on shore, he expired without a groan. When his mother and other relatives found his breath was gone, their shrieks and agonizing cries were distressing beyond measure. Instantly, in a kind of frantic madness, they snatched up his body, hurried it into a canoe, and went off with it to Robanna. Some of the gentlemen of the factory immediately followed in boats, with a coffin.
When the corpse was laid decently into it, Mr. Horne, the clergyman, read the funeral service over it, amid a number of people, and finished with an extempore prayer. The ceremony was conducted with so much solemnity, and performed in so affecting a manner, that the impression was communicated throughout the whole crowd. They drew closer and closer, as Mr. Horne continued to speak; and though they understood not a syllable of what he said, they listened to him with great attention, and bore witness, with every mark of sorrow, to the powers of sympathy.
After the ceremony was over, the gentlemen of the factory retired to their boats, leaving the corpse, as his friend desired, to be buried according to the custom of the country.
ZILPAH MONTJOY.
In the year 1821, died, in the city of New York, an aged woman of color, named Zilpah Montjoy; whose pious circumspect life rendered her an object of peculiar interest to many of her acquaintances; to some of these, whose friendly notice she had experienced, she more than once related the following circumstance:—
Being a slave, inured to hard labor, she was brought up in such extreme ignorance as to have no idea that she was an accountable being—that there was a future state—not even that death was universal, until the sixteenth year of her age, when a girl of her own color dying in the neighborhood, she was permitted to attend the funeral.
The minister's text was, "Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble: he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not!" by which and subsequent remarks, she understood that all were to die; that there was a state of existence after death, a preparation for which was necessary while here.
She was much affected, and returned home in great agitation. Revolving these things in her mind for several days, she at length asked her mistress whether she had understood right, that all must die. The reply was, "Go to your work." She continued thus exercised for a considerable time, earnestly desiring to know what she had to do, but had no one to give her instruction.