rd has made me a sign unto this
nation, an' I go round a-testifyin', an' showin' on 'em their sins agin
my people."

So saying, she took a seat, and, stooping over and crossing her arms on
her knees, she looked down on the floor, and appeared to fall into a
sort of reverie.

Her great gloomy eyes and her dark face seemed to work with some
undercurrent of feeling; she sighed deeply, and occasionally broke
out,--

"O Lord! O Lord! Oh, the tears, an' the groans, an' the moans! O Lord!"

I should have said that she was accompanied by a little grandson of ten
years,--the fattest, jolliest woolly-headed little specimen of Africa
that one can imagine. He was grinning and showing his glistening white
teeth in a state of perpetual merriment, and at this moment broke out
into an audible giggle, which disturbed the reverie into which his
relative was falling.

She looked at him with an indulgent sadness, and then at me.

"Laws, Ma'am, _he_ don't know nothin' about it,--_he_ don't. Why, I've
seen them poor critters, beat an' 'bused an' hunted, brought in all
torn,--ears hangin' all in rags, where the dogs been a-bitin' of 'em!"

This set off our little African Puck into another giggle, in which he
seemed perfectly convulsed.

She surveyed him soberly, without the slightest irritation.

"Well, you may bless the Lord you _can_ laugh; but I tell you, 't wa'n't
no laughin' matter."

By this time I thought her manner so original that it might be worth
while to call down my friends; and she seemed perfectly well pleased
with the idea. An audience was what she wanted,--it mattered not whether
high or low, learned or ignorant. She had things to say, and was ready
to say them at all times, and to any one.

I called down Dr. Beecher, Professor Allen, and two or three other
clergymen, who, together with my husband and family, made a roomful. No
princess could have received a drawing-room with more composed dignity
than Sojourner her audience. She stood among them, calm and erect, as
one of her own native palm-trees waving alone in the desert. I presented
one after another to her, and at last said,--

"Sojourner, this is Dr. 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 Bi