380 PRINCE LEE 500.

the fame that he had heard; for, in his own words, he says of
the prince, that “he was lively and pleasant, and had a polite-
ness without form or restraint, which appeared to be the result
of natural goodness.” Many questions were of course put to
Captain Wilson by the company concerning this personage, and
the country he had brought him from, which no European had
ever visited before ; he obligingly entered on many particulars
which were highly interesting; spoke of the battles in which
his people had assisted the king of Pelew, and of the peculiar
manner the natives had of tying up their hair when going to
war; Lee Boo, who perfectly understood what his friend was
explaining, very obligingly, and unasked, untied his own, and
threw it into the form Captain Wilson had been describing. I
might tire the reader, were I to enumerate the trivial cireum-
stances of a few hours; suffice it to say, there was in all his
deportment such affability and propriety of behaviour, that
when he took leave of the company, there was hardly one pre-
sent who did not feel a satisfaction in having had an interview
with him.

He was taken on visits to many of the captain’s friends, and
shown many of the public buildings in London ; but he was kept
back from some of the principal places of public resort, for fear
of the small-pox ; as it was intended to have him inoculated
when he had learned the English language sufficiently, to be
made sensible of the propriety of inoculation. He also went
every day to aschool at Rotherhithe, to be instructed in reading
and writing ; and his attention was so great, and his affability
and good-humour so conspicuous, as to gain, not only the esteem
of the master, but of the whole school. He very readily noticed
any singularity in his school-fellows, and in the hours of recess
he would with great good-humour divert the family at home by
imitating them and taking them off, Mrs. Wilson he always