"He say all about the things that were in my heart."
"Who taught you to read?"
"God teach me to read."
"What do you mean by saying so?"
"God gave me desire to read, and that make reading easy. Massa give me Bible, and one sailor show me the letter; and so I learn to read by myself with God's good help."
"And what do you read in the Bible?"
"Oh, I read all about Jesus Christ, and How He loved sinners; and wicked men killed him, and He died and came again from the grave, and all this for poor negro. And it sometime make me cry to think that Christ love me so."
Not many days after the first interview with my African disciple, I went from home on horseback, with the design of visiting and conversing with him again at his master's house, which was situated in a part of the parish near four miles distant from my own. The road which I took lay over a lofty down or hill, which commands a prospect of scenery seldom equalled for beauty and magnificence. It gave birth to silent, but instructive contemplation.
As I pursued the meditations which this magnificent and varied scenery excited in my mind, I approached the edge of a tremendous perpendicular cliff with which the hill terminates; I dismounted from my horse and tied him.