Goree; and confirmed by nine slaves, who were taken prisoners along with Abdulkader, by the watering place in the woods, and carried in the same ship with me to the West Indies.

LESSON ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND.

The African Mother.

The distress which the inhabitants of Guinea experience at the loss of their children, which are stolen from them by the persons employed in the slave trade, is, perhaps, more thoroughly felt than described. But, as it is a subject to which every person has not attended, the following is an attempt to represent the anguish of a mother, whose son and daughter were taken from her by a ship's crew, belonging to a country where the God of justice and mercy, is owned and worshipped.

"Help! O help! thou God of Christians!
Save a mother from despair;

Cruel white men steal my children,

God of Christians! hear my prayer.

"From my arms by force they 're rended,
Sailors drag them to the sea-
Yonder ship at anchor riding,
Swift will carry them away.

"There my son lies, pale and bleeding,
Fast, with thongs, his hands are bound;
See the tyrants, how they scourge him!
See his sides, a reeking wound!

"See his little sister by him,
Quaking, trembling, how she lies!

Drops of blood her face besprinkle,
Tears of anguish fill her eyes.

"Now they tear her brother from her!
Down below the deck he 's thrown;
Stiff with beating-through fear, silent,
Save a single death-like groan.'

Hear the little daughter begging:
66 'Take me, white men, for your own;
Spare! oh, spare my darling brother!
He's my mother's only son.

See, upon

the shore she's raving;
Down she falls upon the sands-
Now she tears her flesh with madness,
Now she prays with lifted hands.

"I am young, and strong, and hardy;
He's a sick and feeble boy-
Take me, whip me, chain me, starve me,
All my life I'll toil with joy.

Christians, who's the God you worsh
Is he cruel, fierce, or good?
Does he take delight in mercy,
Or in spilling human blood?

"Ah! my poor distracted mother,
Hear her scream upon the shore".
Down the savage captain struck her,
Lifeless on the vessel's floor.

Up his sails he quickly hoisted,
To the ocean bent his way-
Headlong plunged the raving mother,
From a rock into the sea.

LESSON ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD.

Faithful French Servant.

A lady of Marseilles, in the earlier period of the revolution, about to emigrate, wished, before her departure, to place a considerable property, in plate, linen, trinkets, wearing apparel, and other articles, in a place of safety. To bury in cellars was become so common, that they were now among the first places searched, on any suspicion of concealed treasures; and to convey the things out of the house, even by small portions at a time, without being discovered, was a thing out of all hope. What then was to be done?

She consulted with an old and faithful servant, who, during a great number of years that he had been in the family, had given such repeated proofs of his fidelity and attachment to it, that she placed unbounded confidence in him. He advised her to pack the things in trunks, and deposit them in a garret, at one end of the house; then to wall up the door into it, and new plaster over the whole room adjoining, so as to leave no traces by which it could be discovered that it had any communication with another apartment.

This advice was followed, and the plan executed without the privacy of any other person than the man who suggested it. He himself walled up the doorway, and plastered over the outer room; and, when all was finished, the lady departed, leaving the care of her house entirely to him.

Shortly after her departure, the servant received a visit from the municipal officer, who came, with a party of his myrmidons, to search the house, as belonging to an emigrant, and suspected of containing a considerable property. They examined every room, every closet, every place in the house, but nothing of any value was to be discovered;-some large articles of

furniture, which could not conveniently be disposed of, and which it was judged better to leave, in order to save appearances, were the only things to be found.

The officer said that it was impossible the other things could be conveyed away, and threatened the servant with the utmost severity of justice, if he would not confess where they were concealed. He, however, constantly denied any knowledge of the matter, and said, that, if any thing had been concealed, the secret was unknown to him. This did not satisfy the officer; but, finding he could make no impression on the man, he carried him before the commune.

Here he was again interrogated, and menaced even with the guillotine, if he did not confess where his mistress's property was concealed; but his resolution still remained unshaken; he steadily adhered to his first assertion, that, if any thing was concealed, it was without his knowledge; till, at length, the officers, believing it impossible that, if he really were in possession of the secret, he could retain it with the fear of death before his eyes, were persuaded that he was not in his mistress's confidence, and dismissed him.

They obliged him, however, to quit the house, and a creature of their own was placed in it. Again and again it was searched, but to no purpose; nor was the real truth ever suspected. But when the career of the terrorists was closed by the fall of their leaders, the faithful servant, who beheld their downfall with exultation, as his own triumph, on a representation of his case to the new magistracy, was replaced in his trust in the house of his mistress.

Some little time after, a person came to him one day, who said that he was sent on the part of his mistress; that, as she was unable at present to return, she wished some trunks, which she had left concealed, to be sent to her, as they could now be moved with safety; and she had described to him, he said, the place and manner in which they were concealed, to

the end that, if any misfortune had happened to the servant, he might know where to find them.

He then detailed all the particulars relative to their concealment, with so much accuracy, that the servant, seeing him in full possession of the secret, could not doubt of his being really charged with the mission he assumed. He therefore opened the room, and assisted in conveying away the trunks; after which, he was informed by the emissary, that his mistress had given orders, as there was now nothing of consequence left in the house, that it should be shut up, and he must maintain himself as well as he could. This was almost a heart-breaking stroke to the faithful servant; but no appeal could be made against the will of his mistress, and he took to the trade of a cobbler, which he had learned in his youth, to gain himself a livelihood.

A long time elapsed without any thing more being heard of the lady; when, at length, she appeared, and was in the utmost consternation at learning what had passed. She declared that she had never given a commission to any one to demand her property; nor could she conceive how the impostor had arrived at the knowledge necessary for carrying on the fraud he had practised.

The only way in which she could account for the misfortune was, that, thinking there was no necessity in a foreign country to guard her secret inviolably, she might, perhaps, have talked of it indiscreetly before some one who had thought it worth his while to take a journey to Marseilles to possess himself fraudulently of her property. She acknowledged, at the same time, that the fraud was so artfully contrived, that the servant was fully absolved for having been the dupe of it; and the poverty in which he had lived ever since, perfectly exonerated him from the suspicion of having been any thing else than a dupe in the affair.