IN THE SHADOW
people how to distinguish between friends and foes; two are sufficient for you, your sight, your hearing. But come, Miss Moultrie, will you not do us the honor to join us? Sir Henry can not enjoy his déjeuner until I have told him the name of a new orchid which he has discovered in his greenhouse, though I suspect it to be from a bulb which I sent him from the Essequibo and of which he has forgotten the existence."
"You had better not tell Guijon that," said Sir Henry with a smile. "I doubt if my slight authority would restrain him from open insult." He led the way toward his elaborate greenhouses.
"I will venture to say," observed Leyden, "that this particular plant is a rare Phælenopsis which I found up the Essequibo, on a peculiar expedition I made in the company of a native physician of Georgetown. He had just graduated from Guy's Hospital and was doing some original work in leprosy, and wished to investigate the disease among the Indians and bush negroes, some of whom he proposed to inoculate. The fellow was very intelligent, black as the ace of spades, and finely educated, in spite of all of which an old Obeah doctor got hold of him and convinced him that he possessed a sure cure for the disease which was only efficacious if accompanied by certain rites, incantations, symbols, and such nonsense. It was to me most interesting. Here was a man of European education; as the Americans would say, 'advanced,' skillful in his profession, yet quite amenable to superstition." Leyden laughed softly. "That, you see, was where the African crowded the creature of light; hereditary instincts and impulses jamming the brain, education, freedom of thought into the corner
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