Yet still on Saturday evenings, the only time they can spare, my house is crowded with numbers of them, whose very countenances still carry the air of importunate petitioners for the same favours with those who came before them. But, alas! my stock is exhausted, and I must send them away grieved and disappointed. Permit me, sir, to be an advocate with you, and by your means, with your generous friends in their behalf. The books I principally want for them are Watts' Psalms and Hymns, and Bibles. The two first they cannot be supplied with in any other way than by a collection, as they are not among the books your society give away. I am the rather importunate for a good number of these, as I cannot but observe that the negroes above all the human species that I have ever known, have an ear for music, and a kind of ecstatic delight in psalmody; and there are no books they learn so soon, or take so much pleasure in, as those used in that heavenly part of divine worship. Some gentlemen in London were pleased to make me a private present of these books for their use; and from the reception they met with, and their eagerness for more, I can easily foresee how acceptable and useful a larger number would be among them. Indeed, nothing would be a greater inducement to their industry to learn to read, than the hope of such a present, which they would consider both as a help and a reward to their diligence." Having obtained a further supply of books from London for the negroes, Mr. Davies, in a letter to the same gentleman, gives the following account of the manner in which they were received by them. "For some time after the books arrived, the poor slaves, whenever they could get an hour's leisure from their masters, would hurry away to my house, to receive the charity with all the genuine indications of passionate gratitude, which unpolished nature could give, and which affectation and grimace would mimic in vain. The books were all very acceptable, but none more so than the Psalms and Hymns, which enable them to gratify their peculiar taste for Psalmody. Sundry of them lodged in my kitchen all night, and sometimes when I have awaked about two or three o'clock in the morning, a torrent of sacred harmony poured into my chamber, and carried my mind away to heaven. In this seraphic exercise, some of them spend almost the whole night. I wish, sir, you and their other benefactors could hear any of these sacred concerts. I am persuaded it would surprise and please you more than an oratorio or St. Cecilia's day." Mr. Davies afterwards adds, that two Sabbaths before, he had the pleasure of seeing forty of them around the table of the Lord, all of whom made a credible profession of Christianity, and several of them with unusual evidence of sincerity; and that he believed there were more than a thousand negroes who attended upon his ministry at the different places where he alternately officiated.--_Gillies' Historical Collections, Vol. I, p. 334; Appendix