So anxious was this interesting youth to attain all useful knowledge, that he was always the first at his scholastic duties; and when dismissed from them, after a little recreation, enjoyed with all the zest of health and youth, he would occupy his time in religious reading and study, drawing, and little mechanical works; equally proving his strength of intellect and his active ingenuity. Though his temper was frequently severely tried by the taunts and ridicule of the boys, he never betrayed anger or resentment: he disarmed them by his humility, patience, and meekness; so that scoffers he converted into friends. He was lively in his disposition, but taciturn from thought, except when with his teachers; when he seemed to expand every faculty of his mind to receive their instructions, while any accession of knowledge caused his naturally brilliant eyes to beam with added intelligence and delight.
With all these qualities of mind and heart, it is not surprising that Samboe was a universal favourite; and unfeigned, indeed, was his joy, when he was permitted to write to his dear massa Charles, whom he never named without his eyes filling with tears of grateful affection. "Oh!" he would say, "my dear massa, I shall never forget his goodness." Years passed on in this progressive improvement, during which a regular correspondence was kept up between Charles Roslyn and his protegé, when an incident occurred which opened a field for the exercise of those attainments it had been the laudable and unremitted study of Samboe to acquire.
Colonel Roslyn was entertaining a party of gentlemen, among whom were admiral Herbert and his nephew Fitzhugh. Charles Roslyn was the favourite midshipman of the admiral, and the conversation turned upon the topic of the day; namely, the slave-trade, and the probabilities of its abolition, as well as the capacity of the negroes to profit by their freedom. Many were the arguments adduced for and against; and Colonel Roslyn was naturally led to relate the circumstances of Samboe's becoming Charles's protegé, and the high reward they had experienced in the sweet disposition, high intellectual capacity, moral worth, and genuine religious principles of the young negro. "I have the sincerest pleasure," observed Colonel Roslyn, "in stating this individual instance of the moral and intellectual worth of an African, of which, doubtless, there are many similar instances, where instruction and kindness have elicited and fostered the qualities of the mind and heart. But we all remember the period, my friends, when the African's claim to the character and privileges of man was even disputed--when they were considered as somewhat of a superior species of ourang outang [5]. This false and inhuman estimate, succeeding years have disproved. It has been in numberless instances shown that they are not only men, but capable of becoming intelligent and virtuous men; and not only virtuous men, but pious, unaffected, sincere Christians. I am not, however," continued the colonel, "an advocate for giving personal liberty to numbers of men, unless, at the same time, I impart the principles of religion and the arts of civil life. It is only by giving freedom to the soul, and by encouraging the virtuous energies of man, that we can make him capable of properly appreciating the blessing of liberty, and preserve him from becoming a pest to society, instead of a useful member of it. Without these correcting and restraining principles, liberty would soon degenerate into licentiousness, and the possession of power be exercised in deeds of violence."