On My Thanking Him,
And Saying That I Thought It Wrong To Take Away Children From Their Parents,
That I
Wished him to give up this system altogether, and trade in cattle,
ivory, and bees'-wax, he urged that she
Was "to be a child" to 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:
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