true idea
of humanity, I believe and assert.

It is hardly necessary for me now to remark, seeing my narrative
must already have suggested it, that what kept Gibbie pure and
honest was the rarely-developed, ever-active love of his kind. The
human face was the one attraction to him in the universe. In deep
fact, it is so to everyone; I state but the commonest reality in
creation; only in Gibbie the fact had come to the surface; the
common thing was his in uncommon degree and potency. Gibbie knew no
music except the voice of man and woman; at least no other had as
yet affected him. To be sure he had never heard much. Drunken
sea-songs he heard every night almost; and now and then on Sundays
he ran through a zone of psalm-singing; but neither of those could
well be called music. There hung a caged bird here and there at a
door in the poorer streets; but Gibbie's love embraced the lower
creation also, and too tenderly for the enjoyment of its melody.
The human bird loved liberty too dearly to gather anything but pain
from the song of the little feathered brother who had lost it, and
to whom he could not minister as to the drunkard. In general he ran
from the presence of such a prisoner. But sometimes he would stop
and try to comfort the naked little Freedom, disrobed of its space;
and on one occasion was caught in the very act of delivering a
canary that hung outside a little shop. Any other than wee Gibbie
would have been heartily cuffed for the offence, but the owner of
the bird only smiled at the would-be liberator, and hung the cage a
couple of feet higher on the wall. With such a passion of
affection, then, finding vent in constant action, is it any wonder
Gibbie's heart and hands should be too full for evil to occupy them
even a little?

One night in the spring, entering Lucky Croale's common room, he saw
there for the first time a negro sailor, whom the rest called Sambo,
and was at once taken with his big, dark, radiant eyes, and his
white teeth continually uncovering themselves in good-humoured
smiles. Sambo had left the vessel in which he had arrived, was
waiting for another, and had taken up his quarters at Lucky
Croale's. Gibbie's advances he met instantly, and in a few days a
strong mutual affection had sprung up between them. To Gibbie Sambo
speedily became absolutely loving and tender, and Gibbie made him
full return of devotion.

The negro was a man of immense muscular power, like not a fe