298 MAGIC LANTERN. Chap. XVT. 



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 instruc- 

 tion, 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 have 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 

 riot go for several days ; when I did go for the purpose, he had 

 his principal men and the same crowd of court beauties near 

 hiin as at the reception. The first picture exhibited was Abra- 

 ham about to slaughter Ins 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 worshipped. 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 

 Saviour appeared. The ladies listened with silent awe ; but, 

 when I moved the slide, the uplifted dagger moving toAvards 

 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 : we could not 

 get one of them back again. Shinte, however, sat bravely 

 through the whole, and afterwards examined the instrument 

 with interest. An explanation was always added after each 

 time of showing its powers, so that no one should imagine there 



