“Why, Sojourner, what do you preach from, then?”

Her answer was given with a solemn power of voice, peculiar to herself, that hushed every one in the room.

“When I preaches, I has jest one text to preach from, an’ I always preaches from this one. My text is, ‘WHEN I FOUND JESUS.’”

“Well, you couldn’t have a better one,” said one of the ministers.

She paid no attention to him, but stood and seemed swelling with her own thoughts, and then began this narration:—­

“Well, now, I’ll jest have to go back, an’ tell ye all about it.  Ye see, we was all brought over from Africa, father an’ mother an’ I, an’ a lot more of us; an’ we was sold up an’ down, an’ hither an’ yon; an’ I can ’member, when I was a little thing, not bigger than this ’ere,” pointing to her grandson, “how my ole mammy would sit out o’ doors in the evenin’, an’ look up at the stars an’ groan.  She’d groan an’ groan, an’ says I to her,—­

“‘Mammy, what makes you groan so?’

“An’ she’d say,—­

“‘Matter enough, chile!  I’m groanin’ to think o’ my poor children:  they don’t know where I be, an’ I don’t know where they be; they looks up at the stars, an’ I looks up at the stars, but I can’t tell where they be.

“‘Now,’ she said, ’chile, when you’re grown up, you may be sold away from your mother an’ all your ole friends, an’ have great troubles come on ye; an’ when you has these troubles come on ye, ye jes’ go to God, an’ He’ll help ye.’

“An’ says I to her,—­

“‘Who is God, anyhow, mammy?’

“An’ says she,—­

“‘Why, chile, you jes’ look up dar!  It’s Him that made all dem!’

“Well, I didn’t mind much ’bout God in them days.  I grew up pretty lively an’ strong, an’ could row a boat, or ride a horse, or work round, an’ do ’most anything.

“At last I got sold away to a real hard massa an’ missis.  Oh, I tell you, they was hard!  ’Peared like I couldn’t please ’em, nohow.  An’ then I thought o’ what my old mammy told me about God; an’ I thought I’d got into trouble, sure enough, an’ I wanted to find God, an’ I heerd some one tell a story about a man that met God on a threshin’-floor, an’ I thought, ‘Well an’ good, I’ll have a threshin’-floor, too.’  So I went down in the lot, an’ I threshed down a place real hard, an’ I used to go down there every day, an’ pray an’ cry with all my might, a-prayin’ to the Lord to make my massa an’ missis better, but it didn’t seem to do no good; an’ so says I, one day,—­

“‘O God, I been a-askin’ ye, an’ askin’ ye, an’ askin’ ye, for all this long time, to make my massa an’ missis better, an’ you don’t do it, an’ what can be the reason?  Why, maybe you can’t. Well, I shouldn’t wonder ef you couldn’t.  Well, now, I tell you, I’ll make a bargain with you.  Ef you’ll help me to git away from my massa an’ missis, I’ll agree to be good; but ef you don’t help me, I really don’t think I can be.  Now,’ says I, ’I want to git away; but the trouble’s jest here:  ef I try to git away in the night, I can’t see; an’ ef I try to git away in the daytime, they’ll see me, an’ be after me.’