. Beecher. He is a very celebrated preacher."

"IS he?" she said, offering her hand in a condescending manner, and
looking down on his white head. "Ye dear lamb, I'm glad to see ye! De
Lord bless ye! I loves preachers. I'm a kind o' preacher myself."

"You are?" said Dr. Beecher. "Do you preach from the Bible?"

"No, honey, can't preach from de Bible,--can't read a letter."

"Why, Sojourner, what do you preach from, then?"

Her answer was given with a solemn power of voice, peculiar to herself,
that hushed every one in the room.

"When I preaches, I has jest one text to preach from, an' I always
preaches from this one. MY text is, 'WHEN I FOUND JESUS.'"

"Well, you couldn't have a better one," said one of the ministers.

She paid no attention to him, but stood and seemed swelling with her own
thoughts, and then began this narration:--

"Well, now, I'll jest have to go back, an' tell ye all about it. Ye see,
we was all brought over from Africa, father an' mother an' I, an' a lot
more of us; an' we was sold up an' down, an' hither an' yon; an' I can
'member, when I was a little thing, not bigger than this 'ere," pointing
to her grandson, "how my ole mammy would sit out o' doors in the
evenin', an' look up at the stars an' groan. She'd groan an' groan, an'
says I to her,--

"'Mammy, what makes you groan so?'

"an' she'd say,--

"'Matter enough, chile! I'm groanin' to think o' my poor children: they
don't know where I be, an' I don't know where they be; they looks up at
the stars, an' I looks up at the stars, but I can't tell where they be.

"'Now,' she said, 'chile, when you're grown up, you may be sold away
from your mother an' all your ole friends, an' have great troubles come
on ye; an' when you has these troubles come on ye, ye jes' go to God,
an' He'll help ye.'

"An' says I to her,--

"'Who is God, anyhow, mammy?'

"An' says she,--

"'Why, chile, you jes' look up DAR! It's Him that made all DEM!"

"Well, I didn't mind much 'bout God in them days. I grew up pretty
lively an' strong, an' could row a boat, or ride a horse, or work round,
an' do 'most anything.

"At last I got sold away to a real hard massa an' missis. Oh, I tell
you, they WAS hard! 'Peared like I couldn't please 'em, nohow. An' then
I thought o' what my old mammy told me about God; an' I thought I'd got
into trouble, sure enough, an' I wanted to find God, an' I heerd some
one tell a story about a man that met God on a threshin'-fl