e peracto ludemus_--the work being finished, we will play--you
remember in your Latin Rudiments lang syne. It is true for you, and I
rejoice to think it is now your portion, after working nobly, to play.
May you have a long spell of it! I am differently situated; I shall
never be able to play.... To me it seems to be said, 'If thou forbear to
deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that be ready to be
slain; if thou sayest, Behold we knew it not, doth not He that pondereth
the heart consider, and He that keepeth thy soul doth He not know, and
shall He not give to every one according to his works?' I have been led,
unwittingly, into the slaving field of the Banians and Arabs in Central
Africa. I have seen the woes inflicted, and I must still work and do all
I can to expose and mitigate the evils. Though hard work is still to be
my lot, I look genially on others more favored in their lot. I would not
be a member of the 'International,' for I love to see and think of
others enjoying life.

"During a large part of this journey I had a strong presentiment that I
should never live to finish it. It is weakened now, as I seem to see the
end toward which I have been striving looming in the distance. This
presentiment did not interfere with the performance of any duty; it
only made me think a great deal more of the future state of being."

In his latest letters there is abundant evidence that the great desire
of his heart was to expose the slave-trade, rouse public feeling, and
get that great hindrance to all good for ever swept away.

"Spare no pains," he wrote to Dr. Kirk in 1871, "in attempting to
persuade your superior to this end, and the Divine blessing will descend
on you and yours."

To his daughter Agnes he wrote (15th August, 1872): "No one can estimate
the amount of God-pleasing good that will be done, if, by Divine favor,
this awful slave-trade, into the midst of which I have come, be
abolished. This will be something to have lived for, and the conviction
has grown in my mind that it was _for this end_ I have been detained
so long."

To his brother in Canada he says (December, 1872): "If the good Lord
permits me to put a stop to the enormous evils of the inland
slave-trade, I shall not grudge my hunger and toils. I shall bless his
name with all my heart. The Nile sources are valuable to me only as a
means of enabling me to open my mouth with power among men. It is this
power I hope to apply to remedy an