"I agree perfectly with you," I answered. "I am a full believer in a special Providence; yet it would seem but a small and undignified exercise of that Divine power, to make you catch a fish at one moment more than another." "What is small, and what is great, to God Almighty?" asked the man, still keeping his eyes on the stream. "He made the emmet as well as the biggest of beasts; he made the grain of sand an well as the mountain. How can you tell, master, how small events may affect great ones? My catching a fish, now or then, may, by giving food and comfort to a family, allay their discontent; and, putting off its outbreak, induce them to go on in quiet, till some further relief comes--in its due season also. Does not the Bible tell us that not a sparrow falls to the ground unnoticed? Everything is by God's will--everything is in God's time. What is small? What is great to Him? In a universe everything has its proper place, every event its proper moment; and the derangement of the least would destroy the order of the whole. My time, too, will come for whatever I have to do; and I am ready to do God's will, whatever it may be." I never was more astonished in my life than by this man's discourse. I had heard Hindoos many a time speak in a somewhat similar way; but they are proverbially a thoughtful, speculative, I may almost say a metaphysical race; but to hear such words from a poor despised negro--from one of a class to whom the higher ranges of thought seem forbidden, as well by capability as by education--was very strange. While he had been speaking he had only turned his face to me once; and when he ceased, I mused for a minute or two, not jumping at a conclusion at once, but asking myself, first, whether he had learned all this from some one else, like a parrot. Rejecting that suspicion speedily, as contradicted by his whole tone and manner, I next considered whether it was likely or unlikely that every faculty of the mind would be equally developed. Grasp of intellect, logical power, he certainly possessed; but a good many (perhaps) subordinate qualities and faculties are requisite to make such gifts available for man's conduct, either towards his fellow man or towards his God. I had nearly come to the conclusion that it was almost certain he must possess them, when suddenly a laugh--the unmeaning, almost idiotic laugh of the negro race--broke from his lips, followed by-- "Ah, master, I've caught you!" And I saw him pulling a large fish towards the shore. It seemed that this was all he wanted. He showed it to me with a sort of child-like triumph; and then, throwing away the pole with which he had been fishing, and rolling up his line, he walked some way by my side, as I took my path homeward.