bring me water, and that a great man
ought to have a child for the purpose, yet I had none. As I replied that
I had four children, and should be very sorry if my chief were to take
my little girl and give her away, and that I would prefer this child to
remain and carry water for her own mother, he thought I was dissatisfied
with her size, and sent for one a head taller; after many explanations
of our abhorrence of slavery, and how displeasing it must be to God
to see his children selling one another, and giving each other so much
grief as this child's mother must feel, I declined her also. If I could
have taken her into my family for the purpose of instruction, and then
returned her as a free woman, according to a promise I should have made
to the parents, I might have done so; but to take her away, and probably
never be able to secure her return, would have produced no good effect
on the minds of the Balonda; they would not then have seen evidence of
our hatred to slavery, and the kind attentions of my friends would, as
it almost always does in similar cases, have turned the poor thing's
head. The difference in position between them and us is as great as
between the lowest and highest in England, and we know the effects of
sudden elevation on wiser heads than hers, whose owners had not been
born to it.

Shinte was most anxious to see the pictures of the magic lantern; but
fever had so weakening an effect, and I had such violent action of the
heart, with buzzing in the ears, that I could not go for several days;
when I did go for the purpose, he had his principal men and the same
crowd of court beauties near him as at the reception. The first picture
exhibited was Abraham about to slaughter his son Isaac; it was shown
as large as life, and the uplifted knife was in the act of striking the
lad; the Balonda men remarked that the picture was much more like a god
than the things of wood or clay they worshiped. I explained that this
man was the first of a race to whom God had given the Bible we now held,
and that among his children our Savior appeared. The ladies listened
with silent awe; but, when I moved the slide, the uplifted dagger moving
toward them, they thought it was to be sheathed in their bodies instead
of Isaac's. "Mother! mother!" all shouted at once, and off they rushed
helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell over each other, and over the little
idol-huts and tobacco-bushes: we could not get one of them back again.