XIIA SCHOOL
I said that Mendam had the best laugh in the school; and a good heart went with it. A much younger boy, Mba, came from a town near where Mendam lived. But they were not of the same clan. Both boys were from towns far up the river and neither of them had ever seen the sea until they came to my school. Like all interior people they thought that the whole world was one great “bush.” Mba was shy and sensitive and Mendam became abig brotherto him through the school year. I think theBig Brotheridea, now popular in America, must have come from Africa. The two boys became devotedly attached to each other. Mendam helped Mba with his lessons; helped him also to take the jiggers out of his feet.
One day just before dinner several boys were down in the gully behind the school when they suddenly came upon a python. They announced it with a shout that brought the entire school stampeding down the hill. Mba had his whole dinner of rice and smoked fish on his plate at the moment when he heard the shout. He ran with it in his hand until he came to the path leading down into the gully, and then, naturally, he set the plate down in the path while he hurried on. But how was Obiang to know that Mba’s dinner was right in the middle of the path when he came tearing down the hill to kill the python? Obiang planted his foot fair on the plate, leaving a large track and not much else. Mba, after a vain hunt for the python, came back to enjoy his dinner. I hope we shall never get so old that we cannotsympathize with the pangs of a hungry boy. Mba was as inconsolable as the mother bird whose “brood is stol’n away.” But it only lasted till Mendam arrived.
“Never mind, Mba,” he said, “I’ll give you half of my dinner. I’ll give youmorethan half.” That was some sacrifice for a healthy, hungry boy who was much bigger than Mba.
But the tragedy of life begins early in Africa. One day the news came that war had broken out between neighbouring towns up the river and that Mba’s father had killed Mendam’s father.
It was a bitter grief for both boys, and a hard struggle on the part of Mendam; for the blood of countless generations in his veins cried vengeance. By all the codes and customs that ever he had heard of before he came to school he should have hated Mba with a hatred that would last for life. It was a hard struggle; but if the Christian faith in him had not triumphed—if the friendship of the two boys had been broken—I don’t think I would have told the story.
Many friendships were formed in the school which in after years would surely become a power for the prevention of war and the shedding of blood. Boys of neighbouring clans, mutually hostile, clans between which there were old feuds; clans which are bred in the belief that it is a virtue to hate each other—in that schoolboys of such clans found themselves side by side; and in the social alignments of the school these very boys were drawn together by the fact that, coming from neighbouring communities, they had much in common. These school friendships were exceedingly strong; for the African’s affections are his substitute for moral principles. It is impossible that such boys should afterwards contract the mutual hate of their fathers, or without compunction shed each other’s blood.
Many of the boys when they came to Baraka had only the smallest rag of clothing and some had none. I got just boys—nothing more. I had their clothes made and ready for them before the school opened. The dress which a fellow missionary devised for them was a gingham shirt with a yoke, and loose sleeves to the elbow, and the usual cotton robe (acloththey call it) of bright colours bound with red or white, fastened around the waist and falling below the knees. They wore only the cloth in the schoolroom, the shirts being kept for parade. I disliked to see trousers on the natives, with a few exceptions of those who were perfectly civilized in mind and manners and somewhat cultivated in taste. It immediately and unconsciously introduced a standard of dress and taste to which they could not measure up; a standard entirely different from that which was applicable to a primitive people in conditions of simplicity and freedom. Moreover, the natives, both men and women, as well as children, look by far the best in bright colours, not admissible in our style of clothing. They do not look well in white; and in black they are ugly. But red, yellow, blue, orange, purple, green—any of these colours, or all of them, are becoming and appropriate to their climate.
The day’s program for this school of seventy-five boys was as follows: At 5:45A. M.the rising bell rang and at 6:15 I met the boys in the schoolroom for prayers, after which they had breakfast. From seven o’clock until nine they cut grass and did other necessary work in the yard. In the proper season they picked the oranges and gathered them. From nine o’clock until half-past three they were in school, with a recess of half an hour in the morning for taking jiggers out of their feet, and an hour at noon for dinner. At half-past three the dispensary was opened for the sick and ailing. From four o’clocktill five they worked again in the yard, and at five they all took a bath in the sea. On Saturday morning the program was the same until ten o’clock. Then a small piece of soap was given to each boy and they all washed their clothing in a stream that passed near their house. Extravagance always goes with improvidence, and both are prominent characteristics of the African. But in nothing else is their extravagance more flagrant than in their use of soap, although they are so eager for it and have so little of it.
The cutting of grass is a constant labour. There is no such thing as a lawn; the grass is very coarse and rank, and does not form a sod. There is every condition of growth—good soil, heat and moisture; and the rapid growth of vegetation is astonishing. Here and there on the mission premises were large beds of the strange sensitive-plant, which at the least disturbance folds its petals together face to face. Before one, as he walks through it, its beautiful foliage is spread like a heavy green carpet, while behind him is nothing but scraggy, wilted vines and no foliage at all. But in a few minutes it opens again.
The Africans use a short, straight cutlass for cutting grass, which requires that they stoop to the ground. Even at the best, it is very slow work. I, like others before me, imported a scythe, and showed several of the workmen how to use it. But they did not take to it. As soon as I disappeared it was put carefully away for my own use.
Besides the cutting of grass, there were roads to keep in repair, cargo to land, or carry from the beach to the storeroom, and much other work. The work of the boys saved the necessity of hiring a number of men; and so the boys paid a large part of the expense of keeping them. As a matter of fact, the maintenance of each boy(his food and clothing) cost six or sometimes seven dollars for an entire year.
It required a vast expenditure of energy and continual oversight to get seventy-five boys to go to work promptly and to work well. They were just at the age when total depravity takes the concrete form of laziness; but they were not more lazy than so many white boys.
One day when they were cutting the very long grass in the back of the garden, there was a sudden cry, “Mvom!” (python). Lying in the grass was a monster python with several coils around a dog which it was preparing to swallow. It was a dog that we all knew, the only one of a respectable size in the community. Being preoccupied with the dog, and partly hidden in the grass, it did not seem to pay any attention to the boys. About twenty-five of them remained to watch it while fifty came to call me. Baraka was well provided with various firearms, but there was not a single piece that would actually shoot. As a rule the appearance was all that was really necessary. But in a real emergency this left something to be desired. Finding myself without a weapon I went to the garden and looked at the monster snake, and when I saw that it did not seem disposed to leave so fine a supper I cautioned the boys to keep away from it while I ran to an English trading-house—Hatton & Crokson’s—in search of a weapon. The traders were as defenseless as the mission. The manager, however, recalled that there was in his possession a pistol, a precious affair, belonging to the firm. I waited exactly half an hour while he put it “in perfect condition,” and loaded it. I kept on waiting while he stood with it in his hand telling me what a fine weapon it was, instructing me in its use, and especially requesting that I should bring it back myself and not entrust it to a native for reasons which he fully explained. I then returned to the mission wonderingwhether the python might not take a fancy to something more delicate than a poor dog, and how many boys a python would hold. But it was still coiled about the dog not having finished crunching his bones. I crept very close, took deadly aim and fired. Deafening silence! The pistol did not go off. Again I pulled the trigger, with the same result, and again, and again. I withdrew in disgust. It was the only big game that I had ever attempted to shoot; and I had already considered what I would do with the skin.
The older boys and several men who were present had been eager all the while to attack it with their cutlasses; and I now gave them permission. They formed in line. One man was to strike first, back of the head, and all the rest instantly to follow. It had lain quiet so long and was so very sluggish that one could hardly conceive that it was alert; but at the first stroke, before the other cutlasses fell, it had gone like a flash. We could only guess at its size; but I have vowed never to record my guess. Pythons have been actually measured in Gaboon at thirty feet.
One day the schoolboys killed a very young one twelve feet long, and immediately returned to search for the parents; for they said that a mere baby python like this would not yet have left its parents’ care to shift for itself. The next day after this several of the smaller boys were taken sick and I was called to the dormitory to see them. My immediate diagnosis waspython, and I found that I was right. But none of the boys who had been in the school for more than one term joined in the feast; and some of them would no more have eaten it than I would.
The regular food of the boys was cassava and dried fish. Plantains were sometimes substituted for cassava. If we were out of fish I gave them sardines—one sardineto each boy as his allowance of meat for a whole day; I believe that no devout contributor to missions will charge me with extravagance. If I had neither fish nor sardines I gave them coconuts. The meat of a very ripe coconut is full of a strong oil and the natives like it. A boy’s food costs less than a cent a meal.
The food for an entire day was given out at noon. They cooked their fish all together in a large kettle. During the entire year there was never a quarrel over the division of their food. I provided knives and forks and a beautiful service of tin plates and spoons, all of which was new to them as well as eating off a table—in this instance a broad shelf around the outside of the house covered by the projecting eaves. The only plates that they had ever known were leaves; so they called the platesleaves, and had no other name for them. But I was rather puzzled the first time a boy came and asked me for a “leaf”—“a white man’s leaf.”
The schoolhouse was an old discarded residence, which had been used by native ministers and others connected with the mission. It had been good in its day, and it had a board floor; but it was now in an advanced stage of decay. It was divided into two rooms. One day I was in the smaller room teaching a class of fifteen little boys seated on three long benches when suddenly the floor gave way and the whole class fell through. White ants were probably responsible for the collapse. The floor was elevated on posts and the ground was several feet below. One side of the room went down before the other, declining the benches so that the boys slid to the lower end and fell off all in a heap. They got up after a while and having crawled out they went around the schoolhouse and marched in at the front door. Nduna, who was teaching a class, being surprised at their entrance, said: “I thought you boys were in this other room.” Esona, the wittiest boy in the school, replied: “We thought so too but we were mistaken.”
SCHOOLHOUSE AND DORMITORY AT GABOON.
SCHOOLHOUSE AND DORMITORY AT GABOON.
SCHOOLHOUSE AND DORMITORY AT GABOON.
The dormitory was a long, low building with earth floor, walls of bamboo and roof of palm thatch. The teacher lived in one end of it, in a large room separated by a partition. The bed was a bunk five feet wide which ran around the walls of the whole interior. This bunk was a simple device of my own. I made it with the assistance of a native carpenter out of boxes, of which there was always a great pile on hand, in which shipments of goods had been received. The bare boards with nothing else would have been by far the best beds that the boys from the interior and many of the others had ever slept upon. But there were rolls of discarded matting in the storeroom which had been accumulating for a generation. I had this washed, and spread on the beds, and even doubled, which made them positively luxurious. Their house was kept as clean as such a house could be kept. They did their cooking outside under a roof without walls, and the house was very little used except for sleeping.
This all may seem very simple—ludicrously simple. Butthe simple lifeis a popular vogue in these days, at least in theory; and we were only practicing what others preached. For those boys it was such a change as cannot easily be imagined. They were taught habits of order and cleanliness, self-respect and consideration for others, to work and to think, all that is essential to civilization, and the great religious truths which are its foundation and which centre in the cross of Christ. Even if they do not become professed followers of Christ they are far removed from their former life. That life and its surroundings will never be the same to them, and will never again satisfy them.
Parents were more willing to give me sick childrenthan any others, because these were of little or no use at home, and they soon learned that those who went away sick were more than likely to return well.
Each day after school hours I opened the dispensary. At the beginning of the term there were usually twenty or thirty boys who were treated daily. None of them, of course, were very serious cases. Most of them had itch, all of them had worms, many had ulcers, and there were a few fevers and a few fits. In my last year in Africa a fellow missionary relieved me of most of this medical work. Some of the ulcers were dreadful, for the blood of many of these children, especially those who live near the coast, is so tainted with venereal disease that a small cut or scratch is liable to become an ugly sore, and such wounds are rarely cleansed. Long before the close of the term, however, they were nearly all well and their bodies clean and smooth.
In a former chapter I have told at some length of the scourge of the jigger, and how the discipline of the school was concentrated in an effort to make the boys keep them out of their feet. A boy who had jiggers got no food until his feet were clean. It was hard discipline, but it would have been cruel to have done otherwise. The whole of the morning recess was spent in examining their feet. Without exception the boys who had been long in the school kept themselves perfectly clean from jiggers, and they in turn were willing to examine the other boys’ feet and report to me. It was a measure of self-protection; for one boy whose feet were full of jiggers would scatter thousands of them. Sometimes in the dry season, when they are worst, I had the boys haul barrels of salt water from the sea and flood the house with it.
The program of daily studies covered the subjects usually taught in primary schools, besides French and the Bible. With the help of a missionary friend Itranslated into Fang a simple catechism of fifty questions and answers and a number of hymns. They committed to memory both catechism and hymns. These they invariably taught in their towns upon their return home. Some few of the boys are very bright in all their studies and learn fast—as fast as American boys; others are stupid in everything—as stupid as some American boys. The average African schoolboy, however, is not as clever as the average American boy. In the acquisition of a foreign language the African boy far surpasses the American. Yet this is not now regarded as a high order of faculty. It rather belongs to the elementary mind and the highly civilized nations tend to lose it.
I have never known an American school in which there was better order and so little exercise of discipline as in my African school. There was no flogging at all. The entire matter of discipline was confined to the jigger-palaver. Yet these boys were not by any means dull or lacking in humour. Indeed, the humour of the Negro is far more keen than that of any Asiatic race, and is nearest to our own.
But even in the best-ordered schools there will be an occasional lapse of discipline, and my school was no exception. One day in the class I called on a certain boy, Toma, to read. A knife had been stolen from my room that morning—probably by a workman—and the boys had been talking about it and wondering if any of their number could have done it. Toma was one of the larger boys and was dull at his books. Moreover, he was conscious of being backward and was easily embarrassed when he was reciting. This day as he rose to recite, a certain smart boy, Esona, whom I have already mentioned, said in a loud whisper: “Now, if anybody can’t recite his lesson that will be a sign that he has stolen Mr. Milligan’s knife.”
The effect of the remark on Toma—as Esona expected and intended—was that it embarrassed him and made it impossible for him to recite. He stumbled on from bad to worse, to the ill-concealed amusement of the class, until at last he came to a dead stop, paused for a moment, and then suddenly turned and flung his book across the room at Esona’s head. It was well aimed, and it hit. Toma evidently knew some things about books that Esona had never thought of.
In singing they excelled. I am sure that only a choir of well-trained American boys could sing as well as those boys of my school. They soon acquired a reputation on the coast, and visitors, from passing steamers, having heard of them from the captains and others, asked to hear them sing; and I do not think that they were ever disappointed. There was a quartette of boys who sang beautifully. I made some phonograph records of their singing, but after bringing them all the way to New York in safety, where I used them a few times, they got broken between New York and Chicago.
The hymn, if well used, is the form in which the Christian religion will reach more people than can be reached by any other means. When these boys returned to their towns the people old and young were eager to learn the hymns, and had soon committed many of them to memory. In far-away towns that no white man had ever visited before, I have held a service, and when I started a hymn the people all joined heartily in singing.He Leadeth Mewas the favourite of all the hymns, and was always the first one that they learned.
The routine of the day’s work was liable to various interruptions. Sometimes a boy was enticed by his relations to run away from the school. I always followed, and at any cost brought him back, for fear of the demoralization of the school. I had always exacted a promiseof each boy when I received him that he would stay until the end of the term. And they never ran away except when induced to do so by people of their town whom they happened to meet. One day word was brought to me that two of the boys had run away, having been persuaded to do so by a relation who came selling food. I set out in hot pursuit with several attendants, and soon we met the man who had been overheard asking the boys to go with him. He denied all knowledge of them, but I had proof. I brought him to Baraka, bound him hands and feet and said that he would be released as soon as the boys were returned to me. In a few hours the boys arrived.
There were other interruptions. For instance, while I am engaged in the absorbing task of unfolding the implications of monotheism to a class of theological students whom I am preparing for the work of catechists, a naked Fang from the bush stalks into the room unannounced and says: “White man, what’s good for worms? I’m full of them.”
“Santonine and castor oil,” roars the whole class in concert, with such alacrity and assurance that I wish it were one of the implications of monotheism.
“Well, I’ve brought two eggs,” says the Fang; “good eggs—both of them laid this morning—and I want some of that medicine.”
I leave the class and first spend considerable time testing the eggs. One of them is probably the oldest egg in the world. I complain to the man, and he tells me that he took his wife’s word for its being laid that morning; but that he might have known better, for she is the worst liar that ever lived, and he—a lover of truth—is going to send her home to her father and demand the dowry which he paid for her. And if it be refused war will be declared between that town and his own.
I advise him that the matter of the egg is hardly worth going to war over. The other egg is middling good; and I give him the medicine. Then I resume the theological lecture.
The most noticeable feature of thissimple lifeis its bewildering complexity. There is no mental perspective. The clamour of the small but immediate interest constantly claims the attention, as a mote may bolt a landscape. Emerson’s observation, that Isaac Newton was as great while engaged in tying his shoe-string as in computing the magnitude of the fixed stars, was comforting when much of my time was occupied in tying shoe-strings. Yet, after all, such a life is exactly as great, or as petty, as a man himself makes it. The shoe-string is the equivalent of a cup of cold water. And it is a fact that these small matters afford the very best kind of opportunity for personal contact and personal influence with the native.
But the worst annoyance was due to parents coming to visit their children. Sometimes half a dozen men and women would come from a distant town to visit one small boy, all of them claiming the parental relation. In the first place, such visitors could not understand why the boys should not be kept out of school while they were there. And then they could not understand why they should not stay over night or several nights, at my expense, and sleep in the boys’ dormitory. Each of these matters involved a long contention. Then they could not understand why their boys should not be allowed to return home with them and spend a few days. Then they could not understand why I should not give each of them a present when they were about to take their leave. Sometimes the boys, themselves, who had been happy and content, became unsettled and wanted to go home. About every second or third day such visitors were announced. Parents were always my chief trouble in Africa. Even in fevereddreams they haunted me. At first these contentions, which usually occurred in the morning, fairly wore me out before the day’s work was well begun, but I afterwards learned to regard them as inevitable and to bear them with the least mental expense possible. My answers and protests became stereotyped, and I could carry on a vigorous contention while thinking of something else. But I tried hard not to offend these people, and somehow we always parted on friendly terms. Within a month I might meet them in some distant town, and an unkindly reception or unkindly report would defeat the purpose of my preaching.
In the middle of the term I had a picnic. Taking theLafayetteor theEvangelinein tow behind theDorothywe went to a beach twelve miles away and spent the day. We had many of the usual picnic sports. But nearly all the prizes were soap, the pieces ranging from one to six inches. Their deficiency in real sportsmanship is not surprising, but it is rather amusing. A boy’s effort to win a race consisted largely in attempting to disable his competitors.
They showed more of the true spirit of the sportsman in their native games and sports.
They are fond of wrestling, and they wrestle fairly well. There is a game in which two sides are chosen, and a boy of the first side, standing opposite a boy of the second side, raises his arms above his head—which the other boy must do at the same time—then claps his hands together rapidly, as often as he pleases, at length suddenly thrusting either arm in front of him as if striking a blow. The other boy must keep with him as nearly as possible, and at the right moment thrust out the corresponding arm. A certain number of “wins” makes a chief. The chief retires honourably from the game and becomes a spectator. This game is a training both for mind and muscle.
In their own towns, where they have spears, men and boys play a game in which some object, perhaps a piece of plantain stock, is hurled along the ground, while from either side they throw their spears at it and try to “wound” it.
They have an interesting variation ofHide and Seek. One of their number is sent into the bush to hide. In his absence some one “curses” him. Then they all call to him and vociferously ask him: “Which of us cursed you? Which of us cursed you?” His only guide is their countenances, which he studies. If he names the right one, then the latter must hide.
They have a “laugh” game in which a boy, standing before his fellows, bids them laugh and tries in every legitimate way to compel them. He mimics various animals, or well-known persons, especially persons of great dignity. The boy who laughs exchanges places with him and in turn bids his fellows laugh. They have a mocking song which they sing to one who fails to make anybody laugh. This is a good training for oratory, which occupies a large and important place in all Africa, the land of thepalaver. It is also a training in facial control, in which, as it seems to me, the African is no amateur.
They also have gambling games in their towns; but I do not know that habitual gambling is common.
Some of the games of the schoolboys, like some of their stories and fables, may have been borrowed from adjacent tribes. For the Fang, whom I know best, are in contact with other tribes south of them and also with the people of Gaboon, where many tribes intermingle.
The boys were very fond of dancing, in which they often indulged in the cool evening after supper. African dances are not in the least degree effeminate; and they have nothing like our round dances. Their dancing is as vigorous and masculine as their wrestling, and as agymnastic exercise is far better than wrestling. They dance with the whole body, keeping time with the feet, while they wag the head, sway the shoulders, rotate the thighs, agitate the muscles of the stomach until it seems to gyrate. The African dance is distinctly a “stunt.” In many of the dances they follow one another round and round in Indian file.
But they also have hunting-dances and war-dances with sham fights. Some terrific battles, with uncomputed casualties, have been fought in my school yard. In one of these battles they impressed into service an enormous brass kettle which I had provided for their cooking. This and a number of old kerosene tins did noble service as a military band and reinforced their yelling battle-song. They seriously damaged the brass kettle. But I forgave them; for it was the only instance of destruction of which they were guilty during the whole year. One would scarcely expect them to study economy when a battle was raging upon which—if I might judge by the evidence of wild enthusiasm—the future of their tribe was depending. Will it seem credible, or even possible to the American, that never once did a real fight occur as an incident in these battles?
When the grass was rankest, however, or when the torrential rains had excoriated the hillside roads, and there was plenty of hard work for the schoolboys each day, they usually substituted story-telling and singing for dancing and games in the cool of the evening.
Boys in Africa and everywhere else are fond of animal stories. The story-teller imitates all the animals of his story, and as this talent differs in different individuals, the story loses nothing, but rather gains by repetition. Mendam, Nkogo, Esona and Ekang were all good story-tellers. The following stories are known widely in West Africa:
The tortoise (which corresponds to Uncle Remus’sBrer Rabbit) challenged the hippopotamus to a tug-of-war. The hippopotamus at first refused to believe that the tortoise was serious, but at length he accepted the challenge. Then the tortoise challenged the rhinoceros to a tug-of-war. The rhinoceros at first did not believe that the tortoise was serious, but at length he, too, accepted the challenge.
At the appointed time the tortoise was on hand with an enormous bush-rope (liana), and when the hippopotamus arrived he fastened one end of it to him and brought him to the bank of the river.
“Now,” said the tortoise, “I shall fasten the other end to myself and we shall keep on pulling until you pull me into the river or I pull you into the bush.”
Just then the rhinoceros came along to keep his appointment, and the tortoise fastened the end of the rope to him and said: “Now, I shall fasten the other end to myself and we shall keep on pulling until you pull me into the bush, or I pull you into the river.”
Then the hippopotamus and the rhinoceros pulled against each other, and pulled and pulled. Sometimes the rhinoceros was dragged almost into the river and again the hippopotamus was dragged to the bush. At length they became completely exhausted and each of them decided to give up to the tortoise and admit defeat. For this purpose they came walking towards each other until they met. They looked at each other for a moment in surprise, and then they both cursed the tortoise.
The chameleon, despite its innocence, is an object of superstitious fear to the African, and they are disposed to regard it as superwise.
The chameleon challenged the elephant to run a race. The elephant was amused, for the chameleon is one ofthe slowest creatures in the forest. But finding that the chameleon was really in earnest, the elephant accepted the challenge. So the chameleon and the elephant set out on a long race through the forest. The chameleon only started and then immediately turned back; for he had arranged with different members of his family that one of them should be present at the end of each stage of the race. So at the end of the first stage when the elephant came dashing in, all out of breath, he found the chameleon already there.
“What? You here?” exclaimed the astonished elephant.
“Yes,” said the panting chameleon, “I just got in.”
“Aren’t you very tired?” said the elephant.
“Not very,” said the chameleon.
So they set out again. But the chameleon only started and came back, while the elephant ran on.
At the end of the next stage the elephant was again surprised to find that the chameleon had arrived a little ahead of him. And so it happened at the end of each stage until at last the elephant gave up, and confessed that the chameleon had outrun him.
In all African fables the various animals are but thinly disguised human beings.
The leopard bet his life to the antelope that if he would hide the antelope would not be able to find him. The antelope agreed, and the leopard went and hid in the forest. But the antelope found him very quickly. Then the leopard was very angry. So he told the antelope to hide and see how quickly he could find him. The antelope agreed, but he told the leopard that he would surely have his life.
Then the antelope hid and the leopard searched for him and searched and searched, but could not find him. Then he said: “I am too tired to walk any more, and Iam hungry; so I shall pick some of these nuts and take them to town to eat.”
So the leopard filled a bag with the nuts, and when he had carried them to town he called all his people together to eat them, and he told a slave to crack the nuts for the people to eat. But, lo, out of the first nut there jumped a fine dog. Now, the leopard was married and had four wives, and each wife had her own house in which she cooked. The dog ran to the first house and asked the wife for something to eat. But the wife beat the dog and drove it out. Then the dog ran to the second house and asked for something to eat. But the second wife beat the dog and drove it out. Then the dog asked the third wife, and she also beat it. Then the dog asked the fourth wife, and she beat it and tried to kill it. But just as it was dying the dog changed into a beautiful maiden. Then the leopard wanted to marry the maiden.
“All right,” she said, “but you must first kill those four wives who beat the dog and tried to kill it.” And the leopard was so much in love with the maiden that he killed his four wives for her sake.
Then he asked the maiden to marry him; but she said: “I cannot marry a husband with such dreadful nails. Won’t you please have them cut?” Then the leopard cut his nails.
But again the maiden said: “I can’t marry a husband with such awful eyes. Won’t you please take them out?” And the leopard tore out his eyes.
Then the maiden said: “I can’t marry a husband with such clumsy feet. Won’t you please chop them off?” And the leopard had his feet chopped off for he loved the maiden and wanted to marry her.
But again the maiden said: “There is just one more thing that I wish you would do for me. Your teeth are frightfully ugly. Won’t you have them knocked out?”And then the leopard sent to the fireplace for a stone and had his teeth knocked out.
Then the maiden was suddenly changed into the antelope; who said to the dying leopard: “You thought to outwit me, but I have outwitted you and have taken your life and the life of your whole family.”
Towards the middle of the term the boys began to come to me voluntarily, one by one, saying that they desired to be Christians; and before the term had closed nearly all, at least four out of five, had professed faith in Christ. How many of these would prove faithful no one could tell; but very few of them gave me reason to doubt their sincerity. They were not baptized, nor received into the church, until they had been two years on probation. At first my confidence in their profession of faith, compared with that of adults, hesitated; but it grew stronger with experience each passing year. The boys were not the weakest, but the best Christians in Africa. Their minds had never been warped with fetishism; and they had a more intelligent grasp of Christian principles.
Separated from the heathen environment during a portion of their formative years—from its degrading beliefs as well as its immoral practices—and having that intimate contact with the missionary which only a boarding-school provides, the impression was nearly always lasting. “As the twig is bent the tree is inclined.”
The very towns in which these boys lived became different from all other towns. A stranger travelling with me from town to town would surely notice the difference. These boys became without doubt the greatest evangelistic force in the Fang field. Africans are natural orators; and even the small boy has not the least difficulty in expressing his thoughts appropriately. Whatever religious truth I taught the schoolboys they in turn taught their people when they returned home. They didwhat neither myself, nor any other white man, could ever have done. Boys of twelve years, or even ten, gathered the people of their towns around them, both old and young and taught them reading and whatever they had learned of arithmetic. This is a matter of observation and astonishment in all mission fields in Africa.
And all Africans have this beautiful childlike quality that they are teachable—a quality that Jesus must have had in mind when He set a child in the midst of the disciples as the symbol of Christian attainment. The biggest African chief will sit on the ground and listen to the small boy, so long as the small boy knows anything worth while that the chief does not know.