emancipate his own children from slavery. Soon after, Stedman was
dangerously ill, was neglected and alone; fruits and cordials were
anonymously sent to him, which proved at last to have come from Joanna;
and she came herself, ere long, and nursed him, grateful for the visible
sympathy he had shown to her. This completed the conquest; the passionate
young Englishman, once recovered, loaded her with presents which she
refused; talked of purchasing her, and educating her in Europe, which she
also declined as burdening him too greatly; and finally, amid the
ridicule of all good society in Paramaribo, surmounted all legal
obstacles, and was united to the beautiful girl in honorable marriage. He
provided a cottage for her, where he spent his furloughs, in perfect
happiness, for four years.

The simple idyl of their loves was unbroken by any stain or
disappointment, and yet always shadowed with the deepest anxiety for the
future. Though treated with the utmost indulgence, she was legally a
slave, and so was the boy of whom she became the mother. Cojo, her uncle,
was a captain among the rebels against whom her husband fought. And up to
the time when Stedman was ordered back to Holland, he was unable to
purchase her freedom; nor could he, until the very last moment, procure
the emancipation of his boy. His perfect delight at this last triumph,
when obtained, elicited some satire from his white friends. "While the
well-thinking few highly applauded my sensibility, many not only blamed
but publicly derided me for my paternal affection, which was called a
weakness, a whim." "Nearly forty beautiful boys and girls were left to
perpetual slavery by their parents of my acquaintance, and many of them
without being so much as once inquired after at all."

But Stedman was a true-hearted fellow, if his sentiment did sometimes run
to rodomontade; he left his Joanna only in the hope that a year or two in