immediately produced an impression; even the native Africans moderating
their manner, and lowering their yells, as it might be, the better to suit
her more refined tastes. No one, in our set, was too dignified to laugh,
but Jason. The pedagogue, it is true, often expressed his disgust at the
amusements and antics of the negroes, declaring they were unbecoming human
beings and otherwise manifesting that disposition to hypercriticism, which
is apt to distinguish one who is only a tyro in his own case.

Such was the state of things, when Ma_ri_ came rushing up to her young
mistress, with distended eyes and uplifted hands, exclaiming, on a key that
necessarily made us all sharers in the communication--

"Oh! Miss Anneke!--What you t'ink, Miss Anneke! Could you ever s'pose sich
a t'ing, Miss Anneke!"

"Tell me at once, Mari, what it is you have seen, or heard; and leave off
these silly exclamations;" said the gentle mistress, with a colour that
proved she was unused to her own girl's manner.

"Who _could_ t'ink it, Miss Anneke! Dese, here, werry niggers have sent
all'e way to deir own country, and have had a lion cotched for Pinkster!"

This was news, indeed, if true. Not one of us all had ever seen a lion;
wild animals, then, being exceedingly scarce in the colonies, with the
exception of those that were taken in our own woods. I had seen several
of the small brown bears, and many a wolf, and one stuffed panther, in my
time; but never supposed it within the range of possibilities, that I could
be brought so near a living lion. Inquiry showed, nevertheless, that Mari
was right, with the exception of the animal's having been expressly
caught for the occasion. It was the beast of a showman, who was also the