Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

50
THINKING BLACK
slavery." He did not cringe to us, and did not mind
running risks with his bread-and-butter. Wise, too, with
a corrosive sort of wisdom, some things he said were a
clever echo of Epictetus (and who by the by was he, if
not a slave ?).
Even Horace would pardon me for calling
him eloquent. (Horace, too, who was he if not a slave's
son ?) Yet this man finally became as tame as a friendly
mastiff, although all the time a snob to his fellows. And
a slave snob, remember, is king of all the snobs ;
proves it,
too, by kissing the feet of the man above him on the
social ladder, while he kicks the other who is below him.
Himself a slave by purchase and with a commercial
instinct quite in accord with the best traditions of Bihe,
he would sell his own father and mother for an old song.
Q.E.D. : The Romans were right, ** As many slaves, so
many enemies "—bad slavery makes a bad slave.
Why forget that for two centuries and a half the
Mamelukes or white slaves of Egypt ruled in luxury
farther North ? Slaves though they were, did they not
excel in art and poetry ? In later Rome, too, what about
the educated slaves who earned large profits as writers,
lecturers, bankers, physicians, and architects ?
But all this is not lost time, for these days of delay in
Bihe are really full of African apprenticeship. Pushing
on alone as I had done, Mr. Currie kindly gave me
sanctuary in his little mud cabin at Chisamba, and many
a happy day we spent together. Dieted on raw native
mush and beans, this good man (by calling a Missionary,
and by necessity everything) was the Canadian outpost