THE CAPTIVE AFRICAN BOY.
FIFTY years ago there was a boy in Africa who was taken prisoner in one of the fierce wars between the tribes, and was carried away from his home to be sold as a slave. First he was sold for a horse. Then his buyer thought him a bad exchange for the horse, and compelled his master to take him back. Then he was sold for so much rum. This was called another bad bargain by the man who had bought him, and again he was returned, to be sold for tobacco, with the same result. Nobody wanted the poor, miserable slave boy, who was on the point of committing suicide, when he was bought by a Portuguese trader, and carried away in a slave-ship. Ah, how little the wretched boy, as he lay chained in the hold of that crowded slave-ship, thought what the future had in store for him, or what great things God would yet do for him. One day an English war-ship that was clearing the high seas of the slavers, bore down upon the Portuguese vessel, and rescued the captives. The African boy was placed under Christian influences, baptized, and educated, and today he is Bishop Crowther, England's black Bishop in Africa, where he has founded a successful mission. It would be a long story to tell all he has done for his poor people in Africa, how he has fought the slave trade, preached to cannibals, been taken prisoner again and again, and how the Lord has kept him safe in every danger. Twenty-five years after he was made a slave, he found his old mother, and she became a Christian, and died under the hospitable roof of her son's Episcopal residence.-
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