wur in a pen in New Orleans, waitin’ fur we didn’t know what, an’ on come a fever an’ dat trader know he’s got to die.  Den, to make peace wid de Lord at the las’t jump he done giv us all freedom, an’ money to git us into dat great city ov New York; an’ mine lasted me clean up to Misse Hungerford’s door (Aunt Phebe), an’ las’ night, when I see dat nice room over thar an’ that good fire, oh! my,” and the old man buried his face in his hands and wept like a child, then looking up, he said, “Ef I cud only ahad my chilun in thar; ’pears de Lord Himself might ahelped me a minnit sooner—­but dey is gone, all done gone, an’ ’taint no use.”

“You may meet them again, Mr. Jones; I hope we shall know each other there in that better country, and if we do you’ll surely know and find them.”

“Oh!  Miss, that’s the bery thing, it takes a load right off yere, when I think about it,” and he laid his hand on his heart, “but I’d better be shufflin’ off home, an’ I’ll tell you a heap more sometime,” and as he went through the yard, I heard him singing “dat New Je-ru-sa-lem,” prolonging the last word, as if it was too musical to lose.

I told it all to Clara, and she said: 

“Oh!  Emily, is he not one of God’s children, and is it not true that all have that within which points to better things?  How could the soul of this poor negro stay within his body if it were not for this hope that covers his troubles, and, like a lantern-light, throws a gleam into the path which lies before?  I hope he will live now in comfort and die in peace.  He must have been sent to you.  Next time let me listen to his story.”  And she did, for the next evening we walked together over to his home, and spent two hours pleasantly enough.

Clara could not rest until sure of just how he could get along there, and finally made an arrangement with Aunt Peg to give him his meals when he should be there.  The voice of the old man—­he looked more than sixty years, but said his age was fifty, I think he did not know—­quivered with emotion, as he said: 

“Thank yer, mam, thank yer kindly, I’ll tote a load forty miles for ye any day, and I kin tote pretty ‘harbaneous’ loads too.”

“Never mind that, Mr. Jones, I like to see you comfortable.”

“Strange talk, mam,” he said; “these yere ole ears been more used to, ’git up thar, yer lazy nigger, this yere cottin mus be got into de market.’”

He proved a valuable acquisition to my father, and before this month of February, whose beginning brought him to us, had passed, father said to mother: 

“I hardly see how I could get on without Matthias.  He is so trusty, and he is smart too.  If the poor fellow had been given half a chance, he would have made a good business man, for he has good ideas as to bringing things around in season.”

“Truth is stranger than fiction,” said mother.  “Two classes of society have been perfectly represented in those who have been brought to us during this last year.”