“So, this is you,” she said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well, honey, de Lord bless ye!  I jes’ thought I’d like to come an’ have a look at ye.  You’s heerd o’ me, I reckon?” she added.

“Yes, I think I have.  You go about lecturing, do you not?”

“Yes, honey, that’s what I do.  The Lord has made me a sign unto this nation, an’ I go round a-testifyin’, an’ showin’ on ’em their sins agin my people.”

So saying, she took a seat, and, stooping over and crossing her arms on her knees, she looked down on the floor, and appeared to fall into a sort of reverie.

Her great gloomy eyes and her dark face seemed to work with some undercurrent of feeling; she sighed deeply, and occasionally broke out,—­

“O Lord!  O Lord!  Oh, the tears, an’ the groans, an’ the moans!  O Lord!”

I should have said that she was accompanied by a little grandson of ten years,—­the fattest, jolliest woolly-headed little specimen of Africa that one can imagine.  He was grinning and showing his glistening white teeth in a state of perpetual merriment, and at this moment broke out into an audible giggle, which disturbed the reverie into which his relative was falling.

She looked at him with an indulgent sadness, and then at me.

“Laws, Ma’am, he don’t know nothin’ about it,—­he don’t.  Why, I’ve seen them poor critters, beat an’ ‘bused an’ hunted, brought in all torn,—­ears hangin’ all in rags, where the dogs been a-bitin’ of ’em!”

This set off our little African Puck into another giggle, in which he seemed perfectly convulsed.

She surveyed him soberly, without the slightest irritation.

“Well, you may bless the Lord you can laugh; but I tell you, ’t wa’n’t no laughin’ matter.”

By this time I thought her manner so original that it might be worth while to call down my friends; and she seemed perfectly well pleased with the idea.  An audience was what she wanted,—­it mattered not whether high or low, learned or ignorant.  She had things to say, and was ready to say them at all times, and to any one.

I called down Dr. Beecher, Professor Allen, and two or three other clergymen, who, together with my husband and family, made a roomful.  No princess could have received a drawing-room with more composed dignity than Sojourner her audience.  She stood among them, calm and erect, as one of her own native palm-trees waving alone in the desert.  I presented one after another to her, and at last said,—­

“Sojourner, this is Dr. Beecher.  He is a very celebrated preacher.”

“Is he?” she said, offering her hand in a condescending manner, and looking down on his white head.  “Ye dear lamb, I’m glad to see ye!  De Lord bless ye!  I loves preachers.  I’m a kind o’ preacher myself.”

“You are?” said Dr. Beecher.  “Do you preach from the Bible?”

“No, honey, can’t preach from de Bible,—­can’t read a letter.”