14 THE AFRICAN TRADER.

rows when I was carried away by slaver people,
and leave my husband and piccaniny in Africa, and
now your sorrows come. But we can pray to the
good God, and he lift us out of dem all.’

Mammy had often told us of the cruel way in
which she had been kidnapped, and how her hus-
band had escaped with her little boy; and after she
became a Christian (and a very sincere one she
was) her great grief arose from supposing that her
child would be brought up as a savage heathen in
ignorance of the blessed truths of the gospel. My
sisters and I, as children, had often wept while she
recounted her sad history, but at the time I speak
of, I myself was little able to appreciate the deeper
cause of her sorrow. I thought, of course, that
it was very natural she should grieve for the loss
of her son, but I did not understand that it arose
on account of her anxiety for his soul’s salva-
tion.

‘I pray day and night,’ I heard her once tell
Jane, ‘dat my piccaniny learn to know Christ, and
I sure God hear my prayers. How He bring it
about I cannot tell.’

We and Mammy followed our father to the
grave, and were then compelled to quit the house,