CHAP. XX.] AND PKEACHEE. 



ungrammatical phrases in the negro idiom might not 

 have been purposely introduced for the sake of 

 bringing the subject home to their familiar thoughts. 

 He got very successfully through one flight about 

 the gloom of the valley of the shadow of death, and, 

 speaking of the probationary state of a pious man 

 left for a while to his own guidance, and when in 

 danger of failing saved by the grace of God, he 

 compared it to an eagle teaching her newly fledged 

 offspring to fly by carrying it up high into the air, 

 then dropping it, and, if she sees it falling to the 

 earth, darting with the speed of lightning to save it 

 before it reaches the ground. Whether any eagles 

 really teach their young to fly in this manner, I leave 

 the ornithologist to decide; but when described in 

 animated and picturesque language, yet by no means 

 inflated, the imagery was well calculated to keep the 

 attention of his hearers awake. He also inculcated 

 some good practical maxims of morality, and told 

 them they were to look to a future state of rewards 

 and punishments in which God would deal impar 

 tially with &quot; the poor and the rich, the black man 

 and the white.&quot; 



I went afterwards, in the evening, to a black 

 Methodist church, where I and two others were the 

 only white men in the whole congregation ; but I 

 was less interested, because the service and preaching 

 were performed by a white minister. Nothing in 

 my whole travels gave me a higher idea of the capa 

 bilities of the negroes, than the actual progress which 

 they have made, even in a part of a slave state, where 

 they outnumber the whites, than this Baptist meet- 



B 2 



