ble, but the horrors of
slavery in South America were, if possible, even worse. The New World
seemed no less full of tragedy than the Old. Etienne saw there
husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters torn
apart, most cruelly beaten, often sold like cattle to tyrannical
masters, never to see each other's faces again.

Amid such scenes Etienne grew more than ever full of despairing
thoughts, more than ever inclined to believe that there could not be a
God ruling a world where these evils were allowed to go unpunished.

'Such was the impression made upon Etienne by the scenes of cruelty
and anguish he witnessed, that, many years after, the sound of a whip
in the street would chill his blood, in the remembrance of the agony
of the poor slaves; and he felt convinced that there was no excess of
wickedness and malice which a slave-holder, or driver, might not be
guilty of.'

Etienne and Joseph stayed in Demerara for more than two years. In the
spring of 1795 they left South America and settled in Long Island near
New York. There, they made friends with a certain Colonel Corsa, a man
who had served in the British army, and who had a daughter who spoke
French. As the two brothers at this time knew no English it was a
great cheer to them in their loneliness to be able to visit at this
hospitable house. One day Colonel Corsa happened to speak of William
Penn. Etienne had already heard of the Quaker statesman, George Fox's
friend, and when the young girl said she possessed Penn's writings
Etienne asked to borrow them. He took back to his lodgings with him a
large folio book, intending, with the help of a dictionary, to
translate it in order to improve his English. Great was his
disappointment when he found that the book contained nothing about
politics or statesmanship. It was about religion; and at this time
Etienne thought that religion was all a humbug and delusion.
Therefore he shut up the book and put it away, though he did not
return it to its owner. One evening, about this time, as he was
walking in the fields alone, suddenly the Voice he had heard in his
childhood spoke to him once more, close by and terribly clear:
'ETERNITY, ETERNITY, ETERNITY.' These three words, he says, 'reached
my very soul,--my whole man shook,--it brought me, like Saul, to the
ground.' The sinfulness and carelessness of his last few years passed
before him. He cried out, 'If there is no God, doubtless there is a
hell.'

His