stranger retired, I remarked, that he seemed to be a very good, pious man. "I guess he is not very pious," said Abduhl. "Why do you think so?" I inquired. "Oh! I see him, this morning, before sunrise, walking up and down the road, and preaching out loud to the people. If he were very pious, I think he would stay at home, at so early an hour, and pray with his own family. and teach them to be good."

Before leaving Africa, Abduhl accomplished the usual course course of instruction in the Mohammedan schools, and could read and write Arabic well. So he told me, and that he had read the Koran through twelve times. While in New York to aid him in his object, a very favorable opportunity presented itself for my testing both his avowed knowledge of the Arabic language, and the fidelity of his statements. I found a friend who had a copy of the Koran, and a clergyman, a neighbor of his, who was a finished Arabic scholar. Having made the necessary previous arrangements, without letting Abduhl know my object, I called with him at the house of this friend, the clergyman being present. After a little conversation, the Koran was produced, an old and rather rusty-looking volume. I put it into Abduhl's hands, asking him if he knew what book it was. He examined the outside very carefully, and then, opening it, exclaimed, apparently with great delight," This is the Koran; I read it through twelve times before I was twelve years old." "Let us hear you read it now," said I. He read for some time, and the clergyman, who was looking over the pages, pronounced his manner of reading it to be, in all respects, that of an accurate, accomplished Arabic scholar. The materials for writing were brought: Abduhl wrote in the Arabic language, and the clergyman bore witness to the correctness and elegance with which it was done. All this was the more wonderful, as he assured us he had never seen an Arabic book, or a solitary leaf of one, during the forty years of his servitude; though he said, he had sometimes amused himself and others by tracing Arabic characters on the sand, or on paper.

There was a very large and enthusiastic meeting in the Masonic Hall, in the City of New York, in behalf of Abduhl and his object, at which a Committee of some of the most respectable citizens was appointed to solicit subscriptions to aid in redeeming his children and grand-children from slavery. What was raised

there, and in various other places, however, did not amount to enough to enable him fully to accomplish his object. All that I can learn from authentic sources, is, that he and his wife sailed in the ship Harriet, Capt. Johnson, from Hampton Roads, on the ninth of February, 1829, in company with 160 emigrants, for Liberia. A letter from him to the Secretary of the American Colonization Society, dated Monrovia, May 5th, 1829, speaks of their safe arrival. He says, "You will please inform all my friends, that I am in the land of my forefathers, and that I shall expect my friends in America to use their influence to get my children for me, and I shall be happy if they succeed. You will please inform my children, by letter, of my arrival in the Colony. As soon as the rains are over, if God be with me, I shall try to bring my countrymen to the Colony, and to open the trade. I have found one of my friends in the Colony. He tells me we can reach home in fifteen days, and promises to go with me. I am unwell, but much better."

Abduhl uniformly declared before leaving this country, that he had no desire to return to Africa, in order to assert his right to the throne of Footah Jalloh. He said, he had seen too much of the troubles and dangers of royalty, to wish to wear a crown at his advanced age. He proposed merely to establish himself, with his family, as a colonist in Liberia; to live and die under American protection; and to render what services he could in promoting an intercourse, advantageous on both sides, between the colony and the interior, especially his own country. But his hopes in these respects, and the high expectations of his friends, and the supporters of the Colony, in this country, were blasted by his being attacked by a disease of the lungs, which, in 1830, ended in his death.

While a slave, Abduhl embraced the Christian religion; and himself, wife, and eldest son were baptized, and joined the communion of a Baptist Church. Certificates from several of the most intelligent and respectable citizens of Natchez testify, that they had know him personally from thirteen to twenty-five years, and that he uniformly sustained the character of a moral, honest man; remarkable for his strict integrity; harmless, faithful, and inoffensive in his conduct; courteous in his behavior, and friendly

to all, and that he was generally respected by a large and respectable circle of acquaintances.

It has been said, that, soon after his return to Africa, he abjured the Christian religion, and went back again to the faith of Mohammed. But I have never seen any satisfactory evidence of this. While with him in this country, he disclosed his religious views and feelings to me in the fullest and most unreserved manner. He professed an entire belief in the Religion of the Bible. His temper, conversation, and conduct manifested, as I thought, the spirit of the Gospel. At times, indeed, he showed a certain degree of attachment to his old religion, and to the Koran. He said, there were many good things in it, and attempted to show me what they were. Now, when I consider his long course of servitude, with comparatively very little moral or religious light poured into his mind, and that he was a mere babe in Christ, I can easily conceive how the early religious instructions and associations of his childhood and youth, might, at times, come up in his thoughts with a freshness and interest, that would lead him to blend the more unexceptionable of them, with his views and affections as a Christian, without subjecting him, in the estimation of that charity which "hopeth all things," to the suspicion of having swerved essentially from the faith as it is in Jesus. Did not Paul, in his day, exercise the same charity towards certain converts to Christianity from among his countrymen, who still retained a strong and avowed attachment to some of their old Jewish notions and customs?

May we not indulge the belief, that the same Charity would discover, if all the circumstances in the case were thoroughly and accurately known, that Abduhl Rahhahman died a Christian? He may have retained to the last, and disclosed to those around him, some of his Mohammedan prejudices. To ascertain how far these prevailed, and whether they materially affected his religious views and character, required the scrutiny of a discerning mind, and the candor of a Catholic heart.

Abduhl's wife survived him. Her name is given, and her age, eighty years, in the Census of Monrovia ; also the names of Simon Rahhahman, aged twenty-one,-Susan, aged seventeen,-and Nancy, aged fifteen, grand-children of Abduhl. I know not whether any of his children ever went to Liberia.

The following verses are found in the African Repository of 1829:

ABDUHL RAHHAHMAN,

THE MOORISH PRINCE.

Speed, speed, beneath the fresh'ning gale,

Fast towards my father-land,

Thou gallant ship, whose snowy sail

Has waved near every strand.

Fast as the coursers of the wind,
Fast as the dawning light,

Speed, like the thoughts which leave behind
Far, far thy tempest flight.

My limbs upon thy deck indeed,

May listlessly remain,

Yet now, as oft, by Fancy freed,

My soul darts home again;

And ship and sail, and rope and spar,

Fast vanish from my view,

And feelings, slavery could not mar,
The shadowy past renew.

Fathers and brothers, kindred all,
Come wrapt in awful gloom;
And slow obey my memory's call,
In cerements of the tomb.
I see the crowd, whose spirit fled
In life's protracted day;

I see the throng, who joined the dead
In childhood's hour of play.

I see the arm of manhood's might
Shrunk to the fleshless bone;
And all that hurries past my sight,
Tells me I stand ALONE.

But what! although my father's halls,
Unrecognised, I tread,-

Although my foot, unconscious, falls
Above my kindred dead;

Do not the bright and glorious sun,

The wide extended plain,

The rivers, which since time has run,

Unchang ng still remain?

And they, though sounds no human voice,

Speak me a welcome true,

That bids my inmost heart rejoice,

As each arrests my view.

For, what though friends and kindred all

No more around me stand,

Am I not in my father's hall,

FREE in my native land.

SHORT TALKS ON GOOD MANNERS.

BY AN EX-MEMBER OF

SOCIETY.

(Addressed to his Second Cousin.)

IN dressing yourself for a party, Stanhope, you must not let artificial rules betray you into inelegance. The etiquette of dress, as well as the fashion of dress in general, becomes an arrant humbug when it falls into conflict with taste or æsthetics. Vulgarity does not depend upon the coarseness of your cloth at all, or upon the roughness of the needlework upon it; but it will be visible in an excessive pliancy to tailors' fashions, or in a mechanical submission to the code of etiquette. Tell your wife, that this theory is just as true in application to the female toilette as to your own.

For instance, you know that you must always appear at a party in a dress-coat never in a frock-coat. But if you come in one of those equivocal specimens of the toga virilis, with elliptical skirts or "swallow tails," be sure that you have sinned against politeness more than if you had worn the seediest frock-coat in your wardrobe. Such articles of wear look well enough behind a counter, where one rather prefers to appear as if ready to take wing to the top-shelf, if necessary, in order to please a customer: but in a party they seem too much as if one had come to present the ladies with their "little account" for the silks and satins in which they are decked.

Again, although you are safe in your full suit of black, or blue coat and black or white pantaloons, and in your white or straw-colored kid gloves, at any social gathering whatever,—still please to warn your wife not to dress for a small circle as she would for an assembly. If a lady is ever out of character, it is when she flaunts in splendid white satins while modest brown or dark-figured silks are all around her. A peacock among daws is very apt to be the object of disagreeable attentions. Etiquette would not be against Mrs. Stanhope in this instance, but taste and common sense would annihilate her.

American etiquette (the best in the world in matters of dress) tolerates the white waistcoat. But if you wear one, see that it is really white, when you buy it. The contrast of pure starched linen will make it look shady, if you purchase whatever the tailors sell for white. You are aware of the prevalence of scarfs," as an article of wear for gentlemen. They are certainly less objectionable at a party than a