by the doctors, and, moreover, so strong a
prepossession for the study of botany, as applied to medicine, that
without any tuition he had composed and classified a sort of flora of
the plants around the dwelling and the vicinity. The establishment of
Mr. Willis, situated on the borders of the sea, was fifteen or twenty
leagues from the nearest town; and the medical men of the district,
ignorant as they were, gave themselves no great deal of care or trouble,
in consequence of the long distance and the difficulty in procuring any
means of conveyance. Desirous of remedying so extreme an inconvenience
in a country subject to violent epidemics, and to have at hand at all
times a skilful practitioner, the colonist made up his mind to send
David to France to learn surgery and medicine. Enchanted at this offer,
the young black set out for Paris, and the planter paid all the expenses
of his course of study. David, having for eight years studied with great
diligence and remarkable effect, received the degree of surgeon and
physician with the most distinguished success, and then returned to
America to place himself and his skill under the direction of his
master."

"But David ought to have considered himself free and emancipated, in
fact and in law, when he set foot in France."

"David's loyalty is very rare: he had promised Mr. Willis to return, and
he did so. He did not consider as his own the instruction which he had
acquired with his master's money; and, besides, he hoped to improve
morally as well as physically the sufferings of the slaves, his former
companions; he trusted to become not only their doctor, but their firm
friend and defender with the colonist."

"He must, indeed, be imbued with the most unflinching probity and the
most intense love for his fellow creatures to return to a master,--an
owner,--after having spent eight years in the midst of the society of
the most democratic young men in Europe."

"Judge of the man by this one trait. Well, he returned to Florida, and,
truth to tell, was used by Mr. Willis with consideration and kindness,
eating at his table, sleeping under his roof. But this colonist was as
stupid, malevolent, selfish, and despotic as most creoles are, and he
thought himself very generous in giving David six hundred francs
(24_l._) a year salary. At the end of some months a terrible typhus
fever broke out in the plantation. Mr. Willis was attacked by it, but
soon restored through the careful a