There's Pippins and Cheese To Come

In my noonday quest for food, if the day is fine, it is my habit to shun the nearer places of refreshment. I take the air and stretch myself. Like Eve's serpent I go upright for a bit. Yet if time presses, there may be had next door a not unsavory stowage. A drinking bar is nearest to the street where its polished brasses catch the eye. It holds a gilded mirror to such red-faced nature as consorts within. Yet you pass the bar and come upon a range of tables at the rear.

Now, if you yield to the habits of the place you order a rump of meat. Gravy lies about it like a moat around a castle, and if there is in you the zest for encounter, you attack it above these murky waters. "This castle hath a pleasant seat," you cry, and charge upon it with pike advanced. But if your appetite is one to peck and mince, the whiffs that breathe upon the place come unwelcome to your nostrils. In no wise are they like the sweet South upon your senses. There is even a suspicion in you—such is your distemper—that it is too much a witch's cauldron in the kitchen, "eye of newt, and toe of frog," and you spy and poke upon your food. Bus boys bear off the crockery as though they were apprenticed to a juggler and were only at the beginning of their art. Waiters bawl strange messages to the cook. It's a tongue unguessed by learning, yet sharp and potent. Also, there comes a riot from the kitchen, and steam issues from the door as though the devil himself were a partner and conducted here an upper branch. Like the man in the old comedy, your belly may still ring dinner, but the tinkle is faint. Such being your state, you choose a daintier place to eat.

Having now set upon a longer journey—the day being fine and the sidewalks thronged—you pass by a restaurant that is but a few doors up the street. A fellow in a white coat flops pancakes in the window. But even though the pancake does a double somersault and there are twenty curious noses pressed against the glass, still you keep your course uptown.

Nor are you led off because a near-by stairway beckons you to a Chinese restaurant up above. A golden dragon swings over the door. Its race has fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it from its dreams.

I have wondered why Chinese restaurants are generally on the second story. A casual inquiry attests it. I know of one, it is true, on the ground level, yet here I suspect a special economy. The place had formerly been a German restaurant, with Teuton scrolls, "Ich Dien," and heraldries on its walls. A frugal brush changed the decoration. From the heart of a Prussian blazonry, there flares on you in Chinese yellow a recommendation to try "Our Chicken Chop Soy." The quartering of the House of Hohenzollern wears a baldric in praise of "Subgum Noodle Warmein," which it seems they cook to an unusual delicacy. Even a wall painting of Rip Van Winkle bowling at tenpins in the mountains is now set off with a pigtail. But the chairs were Dutch and remain as such. Generally, however, Chinese restaurants are on the second story. Probably there is a ritual from the ancient days of Ming Ti that Chinamen when they eat shall sit as near as possible to the sacred moon.

But hold a bit! In your haste up town to find a place to eat, you are missing some of the finer sights upon the way. In these windows that you pass, the merchants have set their choicest wares. If there is any commodity of softer gloss than common, or one shinier to the eye—so that your poverty frets you—it is displayed here. In the window of the haberdasher, shirts—mere torsos with not a leg below or head above—yet disport themselves in gay neckwear. Despite their dismemberment they are tricked to the latest turn of fashion. Can vanity survive such general amputation? Then there is hope for immortality.

But by what sad chance have these blithe fellows been disjointed? If a gloomy mood prevails in you—as might come from a bad turn of the market—you fancy that the evil daughter of Herodias still lives around the corner, and that she has set out her victims to the general view. If there comes a hurdy-gurdy on the street and you cock your ear to the tune of it, you may still hear the dancing measure of her wicked feet. Or it is possible that these are the kindred of Holofernes and that they have supped guiltily in their tents with a sisterhood of Judiths.

Or we may conceive—our thoughts running now to food—that these gamesome creatures of the haberdasher had dressed themselves for a more recent banquet. Their black-tailed coats and glossy shirts attest a rare occasion. It was in holiday mood, when they were fresh-combed and perked in their best, that they were cut off from life. It would appear that Jack Ketch the headsman got them when they were rubbed and shining for the feast. We'll not squint upon his writ. It is enough that they were apprehended for some rascality. When he came thumping on his dreadful summons, here they were already set, fopped from shoes to head in the newest whim. Spoon in hand and bib across their knees—lest they fleck their careful fronts—they waited for the anchovy to come. And on a sudden they were cut off from life, unfit, unseasoned for the passage. Like the elder Hamlet's brother, they were engaged upon an act that had no relish of salvation in it. You may remember the lamentable child somewhere in Dickens, who because of an abrupt and distressing accident, had a sandwich in its hand but no mouth to put it in. Or perhaps you recall the cook of the Nancy Bell and his grievous end. The poor fellow was stewed in his own stew-pot. It was the Elderly Naval Man, you recall—the two of them being the ship's sole survivors on the deserted island, and both of them lean with hunger—it was the Elderly Naval Man (the villain of the piece) who "ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals in the scum of the boiling broth."

And yet by looking on these torsos of the haberdasher, one is not brought to thoughts of sad mortality. Their joy is so exultant. And all the things that they hold dear—canes, gloves, silk hats, and the newer garments on which fashion makes its twaddle—are within reach of their armless sleeves. Had they fingers they would be smoothing themselves before the glass. Their unbodied heads, wherever they may be, are still smiling on the world, despite their divorcement. Their tongues are still ready with a jest, their lips still parted for the anchovy to come.

A few days since, as I was thinking—for so I am pleased to call my muddy stirrings—what manner of essay I might write and how best to sort and lay out the rummage, it happened pat to my needs that I received from a friend a book entitled "The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened." Now, before it came I had got so far as to select a title. Indeed, I had written the title on seven different sheets of paper, each time in the hope that by the run of the words I might leap upon some further thought. Seven times I failed and in the end the sheets went into the waste basket, possibly to the confusion of Annie our cook, who may have mistaken them for a reiterated admonishment towards the governance of her kitchen—at the least, a hint of my desires and appetite for cheese and pippins.

"The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened" is a cook book. It is due you to know this at once, otherwise your thoughts—if your nature be vagrant—would drift towards family skeletons. Or maybe the domestic traits prevail and you would think of dress-clothes hanging in camphorated bags and a row of winter boots upon a shelf.

I am disqualified to pass upon the merits of a cook book, for the reason that I have little discrimination in food. It is not that I am totally indifferent to what lies on the platter. Indeed, I have more than a tribal aversion to pork in general, while, on the other hand, I quicken joyfully when noodles are interspersed with bacon. I have a tooth for sweets, too, although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can. I am told also—although I resent it—that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness. They are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at midnight after society has done its worst.

A fine dinner is lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken—a poor relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my regard, even though it has wallowed in the most aristocratic marsh. Through such dinners I hack and saw my way without even gaining a memory of my progress. If asked the courses, I balk after the recital of the soup. Indeed, I am so forgetful of food, even when I dine at home, that I can well believe that Adam when he was questioned about the apple was in real confusion. He had or he had not. It was mixed with the pomegranate or the quince that Eve had sliced and cooked on the day before.

A dinner at its best is brought to a single focus. There is one dish to dominate the cloth, a single bulk to which all other dishes are subordinate. If there be turkey, it should mount from a central platter. Its protruding legs out-top the candles. All other foods are, as it were, privates in Caesar's army. They do no more than flank the pageant. Nor may the pantry hold too many secrets. Within reason, everything should be set out at once, or at least a gossip of its coming should run before. Otherwise, if the stew is savory, how shall one reserve a corner for the custard? One must partition himself justly—else, by an over-stowage at the end, he list and sink.

I am partial to picnics—the spreading of the cloth in the woods or beside a stream—although I am not avid for sandwiches unless hunger press me. Rather, let there be a skillet in the company and let a fire be started! Nor need a picnic consume the day. In summer it requires but the late afternoon, with such borrowing of the night as is necessary for the journey home. You leave the street car, clanking with your bundles like an itinerant tinman. You follow a stream, which on these lower stretches, it is sad to say, is already infected with the vices of the city. Like many a countryman who has come to town, it has fallen to dissipation. It shows the marks of the bottle. Further up, its course is cleaner. You cross it in the mud. Was it not Christian who fell into the bog because of the burden on his back? Then you climb a villainously long hill and pop out upon an open platform above the city.

The height commands a prospect to the west. Below is the smoke of a thousand suppers. Up from the city there comes the hum of life, now somewhat fallen with the traffic of the day—as though Nature already practiced the tune for sending her creatures off to sleep. You light a fire. The baskets disgorge their secrets. Ants and other leviathans think evidently that a circus has come or that bears are in the town. The chops and bacon achieve their appointed destiny. You throw the last bone across your shoulder. It slips and rattles to the river. The sun sets. Night like an ancient dame puts on her jewels:

And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.

By these confessions you will see how unfit I am to comment on the old cook book of Sir Kenelm Digby. Yet it lies before me. It may have escaped your memory in the din of other things, that in the time when Oliver Cromwell still walked the earth, there lived in England a man by the name of Kenelm Digby, who was renowned in astrology and alchemy, piracy, wit, philosophy and fashion. It appears that wherever learning wagged its bulbous head, Sir Kenelm was of the company. It appears, also, that wherever the mahogany did most groan, wherever the possets were spiced most delicately to the nose, there too did Sir Kenelm bib and tuck himself. With profundity, as though he sucked wisdom from its lowest depth, he spouted forth on the transmutation of the baser metals or tossed you a phrase from Paracelsus. Or with long instructive finger he dissertated on the celestial universe. One would have thought that he had stood by on the making of it and that his judgment had prevailed in the larger problems. Yet he did not neglect his trencher.

And now as time went on, the richness of the food did somewhat dominate his person. The girth of his wisdom grew no less, but his body fattened. In a word, the good gentleman's palate came to vie with his intellect. Less often was he engaged upon some dark saying of Isidore of Seville. Rather, even if his favorite topic astrology were uppermost about the table, his eye travelled to the pantry on every change of dishes. His fingers, too, came to curl most delicately on his fork. He used it like an epicure, poking his viands apart for sharpest scrutiny. His nod upon a compote was much esteemed.

Now mark his further decline! On an occasion—surely the old rascal's head is turned!—he would be found in private talk with his hostess, the Lady of Middlesex, or with the Countess of Monmouth, not as you might expect, on the properties of fire or on the mortal diseases of man, but—on subjects quite removed. Society, we may be sure, began to whisper of these snug parleys in the arbor after dinner, these shadowed mumblings on the balcony when the moon was up—and Lady Digby stiffened into watchfulness. It was when they took leave that she saw the Countess slip a note into her lord's fingers. Her jealousy broke out. "Viper!" She spat the words and seized her husband's wrist. Of course the note was read. It proved, however, that Sir Kenelm was innocent of all mischief. To the disappointment of the gossips, who were tuned to a spicier anticipation, the note was no more than a recipe of the manner that the Countess was used to mix her syllabub, with instruction that it was the "rosemary a little bruised and the limon-peal that did quicken the taste." Advice, also, followed in the postscript on the making of tea, with counsel that "the boiling water should remain upon it just so long as one might say a miserere." A mutual innocence being now established, the Lady Digby did by way of apology peck the Countess on the cheek.

Sir Kenelm died in 1665, full of years. In that day his fame rested chiefly on his books in physic and chirurgery. His most enduring work was still to be published—"The Closet Opened."

It was two years after his death that his son came upon a bundle of his father's papers that had hitherto been overlooked. I fancy that he went spying in the attic on a rainy day. In the darkest corner, behind the rocking horse—if such devices were known in those distant days—he came upon a trunk of his father's papers. "Od's fish," said Sir Kenelm's son, "here's a box of manuscripts. It is like that they pertain to alchemy or chirurgery." He pulled out a bundle and held it to the light—such light as came through the cobwebs of the ancient windows. "Here be strange matters," he exclaimed. Then he read aloud: "My Lord of Bristol's Scotch collops are thus made: Take a leg of fine sweet mutton, that to make it tender, is kept as long as possible may be without stinking. In winter seven or eight days"—"Ho! Ho!" cried Sir Kenelm's son. "This is not alchemy!" He drew out another parchment and read again: "My Lord of Carlile's sack posset, how it's made: Take a pottle of cream and boil in it a little whole cinnamon and three or four flakes of mace. Boil it until it simpreth and bubbleth."

By this time, as you may well imagine, Sir Kenelm's son was wrought to an excitement. It is likely that he inherited his father's palate and that the juices of his appetite were stirred. Seizing an armful of the papers, he leaped down the attic steps, three at a time. His lady mother thrust a curled and papered head from her door and asked whether the chimney were afire, but he did not heed her. The cook was waddling in her pattens. He cried to her to throw wood upon the fire.

That night the Digby household was served a delicacy, red herrings broiled in the fashion of my Lord d'Aubigny, "short and crisp and laid upon a sallet." Also, there was a wheaten flommery as it was made in the West Country—for the cook chose quite at random—and a slip-coat cheese as Master Phillips proportioned it. Also, against the colic, which was ravishing the country, the cook prepared a metheglin as Lady Stuart mixed it—"nettles, fennel and grumel seeds, of each two ounces being small-cut and mixed with honey and boiled together." It is on record that the Lady Digby smiled for the first time since her lord had died, and when the grinning cook bore in the platter, she beat upon the table with her spoon.

The following morning, Sir Kenelm's son posted to London bearing the recipes, with a pistol in the pocket of his great coat against the crossing of Hounslow Heath. He went to a printer at the Star in Little Britain whose name was H. Brome.

Shortly the book appeared. It was the son who wrote the preface: "There needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well known, having been a Person of Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite Curiosity in his Researches. Even that Incomparable Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother, (Et omen in Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work." The sale of the book is not recorded. It is supposed that the Lady Middlesex, so many of whose recipes had been used, directed that her chair be carried to the shop where the book was for sale and that she bought largely of it. The Countess of Dorset bought a copy and spelled it out word for word to her cook. As for the Lady Monmouth, she bought not a single copy, which neglect on coming to the Digbys aroused a coolness.

To this day it is likely that a last auspicated volume still sits on its shelf with the spice jars in some English country kitchen and that a worn and toothless cook still thumbs its leaves. If the guests about the table be of an antique mind, still will they pledge one another with its honeyed drinks, still will they pipe and whistle of its virtues, still will they—

"EAT"—A flaring sign hangs above the sidewalk. By this time, in our noonday search for food, we have come into the thick of the restaurants. In the jungle of the city, here is the feeding place. Here come the growling bipeds for such bones and messes as are thrown them.

The waiter thrusts a card beneath my nose. "Nice leg of lamb, sir?" I waved him off. "Hold a bit!" I cried. "You'll fetch me a capon in white broth as my Lady Monmouth broileth hers. Put plentiful sack in it and boil it until it simpreth!" The waiter scratched his head. "The chicken pie is good," he said. "It's our Wednesday dish." "Varlet!" I cried—then softened. "Let it be the chicken pie! But if the cook knoweth the manner that Lord Carlile does mix and pepper it, let that manner be followed to the smallest fraction of a pinch!"

On Buying Old Books

By some slim chance, reader, you may be the kind of person who, on a visit to a strange city, makes for a bookshop. Of course your slight temporal business may detain you in the earlier hours of the day. You sit with committees and stroke your profound chin, or you spend your talent in the market, or run to and fro and wag your tongue in persuasion. Or, if you be on a holiday, you strain yourself on the sights of the city, against being caught in an omission. The bolder features of a cathedral must be grasped to satisfy a quizzing neighbor lest he shame you later on your hearth, a building must be stuffed inside your memory, or your pilgrim feet must wear the pavement of an ancient shrine. However, these duties being done and the afternoon having not yet declined, do you not seek a bookshop to regale yourself?

Doubtless, we have met. As you have scrunched against the shelf not to block the passage, but with your head thrown back to see the titles up above, you have noticed at the corner of your eye—unless it was one of your blinder moments when you were fixed wholly on the shelf—a man in a slightly faded overcoat of mixed black and white, a man just past the nimbleness of youth, whose head is plucked of its full commodity of hair. It was myself. I admit the portrait, though modesty has curbed me short of justice.

Doubtless, we have met. It was your umbrella—which you held villainously beneath your arm—that took me in the ribs when you lighted on a set of Fuller's Worthies. You recall my sour looks, but it was because I had myself lingered on the volumes but cooled at the price. How you smoothed and fingered them! With what triumph you bore them off! I bid you—for I see you in a slippered state, eased and unbuttoned after dinner—I bid you turn the pages with a slow thumb, not to miss the slightest tang of their humor. You will of course go first, because of its broad fame, to the page on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and their wet-combats at the Mermaid. But before the night is too far gone and while yet you can hold yourself from nodding, you will please read about Captain John Smith of Virginia and his "strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they are cheaper credited than confuted."

In no proper sense am I a buyer of old books. I admit a bookish quirk maybe, a love of the shelf, a weakness for morocco, especially if it is stained with age. I will, indeed, shirk a wedding for a bookshop. I'll go in "just to look about a bit, to see what the fellow has," and on an occasion I pick up a volume. But I am innocent of first editions. It is a stiff courtesy, as becomes a democrat, that I bestow on this form of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient fop in peruke and buckle were giving me the courtesy of its snuff box. If I take the dust in my nostrils and chance to sneeze, it is the fit and intended observance toward the manners of a former century.

I have in mind such a bookshop in Bath, England. It presents to the street no more than a decent front, but opens up behind like a swollen bottle. There are twenty rooms at least, piled together with such confusion of black passages and winding steps, that one might think that the owner himself must hold a thread when he visits the remoter rooms. Indeed, such are the obscurities and dim turnings of the place, that, were the legend of the Minotaur but English, you might fancy that the creature still lived in this labyrinth, to nip you between his toothless gums—for the beast grows old—at some darker corner. There is a story of the place, that once a raw clerk having been sent to rummage in the basement, his candle tipped off the shelf. He was left in so complete darkness that his fears overcame his judgment and for two hours he roamed and babbled among the barrels. Nor was his absence discovered until the end of the day when, as was the custom, the clerks counted noses at the door. When they found him, he bolted up the steps, nor did he cease his whimper until he had reached the comforting twilight of the outer world. He served thereafter in the shop a full two years and had a beard coming—so the story runs—before he would again venture beyond the third turning of the passage; to the stunting of his scholarship, for the deeper books lay in the farther windings.

Or it may appear credible that in ages past a jealous builder contrived the place. Having no learning himself and being at odds with those of better opportunity, he twisted the pattern of the house. Such was his evil temper, that he set the steps at a dangerous hazard in the dark, in order that scholars—whose eyes are bleared at best—might risk their legs to the end of time. Those of strict orthodoxy have even suspected the builder to have been an atheist, for they have observed what double joints and steps and turnings confuse the passage to the devouter books—the Early Fathers in particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of "grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room of dingy plays—Wycherley, Congreve and their crew—looks out through an area grating. It was through even so foul an eye, that when alive, they looked upon the world. As for theology, except for the before-mentioned Fathers, it sits in general and dusty convention on the landing to the basement, its snuffy sermons, by a sad misplacement—or is there an ironical intention?—pointing the way to the eternal abyss below.

It was in this shop that I inquired whether there was published a book on piracy in Cornwall. Now, I had lately come from Tintagel on the Cornish coast, and as I had climbed upon the rocks and looked down upon the sea, I had wondered to myself whether, if the knowledge were put out before me, I could compose a story of Spanish treasure and pirates. For I am a prey to such giddy ambition. A foul street—if the buildings slant and topple—will set me thinking delightfully of murders. A wharf-end with water lapping underneath and bits of rope about will set me itching for a deep-sea plot. Or if I go on broader range and see in my fancy a broken castle on a hill, I'll clear its moat and sound trumpets on its walls. If there is pepper in my mood, I'll storm its dungeon. Or in a softer moment I'll trim its unsubstantial towers with pageantry and rest upon my elbow until I fall asleep. So being cast upon the rugged Cornish coast whose cliffs are so swept with winter winds that the villages sit for comfort in the hollows, it was to be expected that my thoughts would run toward pirates.

There is one rock especially which I had climbed in the rain and fog of early morning. A reckless path goes across its face with a sharp pitch to the ocean. It was so slippery and the wind so tugged and pulled to throw me off, that although I endangered my dignity, I played the quadruped on the narrower parts. But once on top in the open blast of the storm and safe upon the level, I thumped with desire for a plot. In each inlet from the ocean I saw a pirate lugger—such is the pleasing word—with a keg of rum set up. Each cranny led to a cavern with doubloons piled inside. The very tempest in my ears was compounded out of ships at sea and wreck and pillage. I needed but a plot, a thread of action to string my villains on. If this were once contrived, I would spice my text with sailors' oaths and such boasting talk as might lie in my invention. Could I but come upon a plot, I might yet proclaim myself an author.

With this guilty secret in me I blushed as I asked the question. It seemed sure that the shopkeeper must guess my purpose. I felt myself suspected as though I were a rascal buying pistols to commit a murder. Indeed, I seem to remember having read that even hardened criminals have become confused before a shopkeeper and betrayed themselves. Of course, Dick Turpin and Jerry Abershaw could call for pistols in the same easy tone they ordered ale, but it would take a practiced villainy. But I in my innocence wanted nothing but the meager outline of a pirate's life, which I might fatten to my uses.

But on a less occasion, when there is no plot thumping in me, I still feel a kind of embarrassment when I ask for a book out of the general demand. I feel so like an odd stick. This embarrassment applies not to the request for other commodities. I will order a collar that is quite outside the fashion, in a high-pitched voice so that the whole shop can hear. I could bargain for a purple waistcoat—did my taste run so—and though the sidewalk listened, it would not draw a blush. I have traded even for women's garments—though this did strain me—without an outward twitch. Finally, to top my valor, I have bought sheet music of the lighter kind and have pronounced the softest titles so that all could hear. But if I desire the poems of Lovelace or the plays of Marlowe, I sidle close up to the shopkeeper to get his very ear. If the book is visible, I point my thumb at it without a word.

It was but the other day—in order to fill a gap in a paper I was writing—I desired to know the name of an author who is obscure although his work has been translated into nearly all languages. I wanted to know a little about the life of the man who wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb, which, I am told, is known by children over pretty much all the western world. It needed only a trip to the Public Library. Any attendant would direct me to the proper shelf. Yet once in the building, my courage oozed. My question, though serious, seemed too ridiculous to be asked. I would sizzle as I met the attendant's eye. Of a consequence, I fumbled on my own devices, possibly to the increase of my general knowledge, but without gaining what I sought.

They had no book in the Bath shop on piracy in Cornwall. I was offered instead a work in two volumes on the notorious highwaymen of history, and for a moment my plot swerved in that direction. But I put it by. To pay the fellow for his pains—for he had dug in barrels to his shoulders and had a smudge across his nose—I bought a copy of Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," and in my more energetic moods I read it. And so I came away.

On leaving the shop, lest I should be nipped in a neglect, I visited the Roman baths. Then I took the waters in the Assembly Room. It was Sam Weller, you may recall, who remarked, when he was entertained by the select footmen, that the waters tasted like warm flat-irons. Finally, I viewed the Crescent around which the shirted Winkle ran with the valorous Dowler breathing on his neck. With such distractions, as you may well imagine, Cornish pirates became as naught. Such mental vibration as I had was now gone toward a tale of fashion in the days when Queen Anne was still alive. Of a consequence, I again sought the bookshop and stifling my timidity, I demanded such volumes as might set me most agreeably to my task.

I have in mind also a bookshop of small pretension in a town in Wales. For purely secular delight, maybe, it was too largely composed of Methodist sermons. Hell fire burned upon its shelves with a warmth to singe so poor a worm as I. Yet its signboard popped its welcome when I had walked ten miles of sunny road. Possibly it was the chair rather than the divinity that keeps the place in memory. The owner was absent on an errand, and his daughter, who had been clumping about the kitchen on my arrival, was uninstructed in the price marks. So I read and fanned myself until his return.

Perhaps my sluggishness toward first editions—to which I have hinted above—comes in part from the acquaintance with a man who in a linguistic outburst as I met him, pronounced himself to be a numismatist and philatelist. One only of these names would have satisfied a man of less conceit. It is as though the pteranodon should claim also to be the spoon-bill dinosaur. It is against modesty that one man should summon all the letters. No, the numismatist's head is not crammed with the mysteries of life and death, nor is a philatelist one who is possessed with the dimmer secrets of eternity. Rather, this man who was so swelled with titles, eked a living by selling coins and stamps, and he was on his way to Europe to replenish his wares. Inside his waistcoat, just above his liver—if he owned so human an appendage—he carried a magnifying glass. With this, when the business fit was on him, he counted the lines and dots upon a stamp, the perforations on its edge. He catalogued its volutes, its stipples, the frisks and curlings of its pattern. He had numbered the very hairs on the head of George Washington, for in such minutiae did the value of the stamp reside. Did a single hair spring up above the count, it would invalidate the issue. Such values, got by circumstance or accident—resting on a flaw—founded on a speck—cause no ferment of my desires.

For the buying of books, it is the cheaper shops where I most often prowl. There is in London a district around Charing Cross Road where almost every shop has books for sale. There is a continuous rack along the sidewalk, each title beckoning for your attention. You recall the class of street-readers of whom Charles Lamb wrote—"poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls." It was on some such street that these folk practiced their innocent larceny. If one shopkeeper frowned at the diligence with which they read "Clarissa," they would continue her distressing adventures across the way. By a lingering progress up the street, "Sir Charles Grandison" might be nibbled down—by such as had the stomach—without the outlay of a single penny. As for Gibbon and the bulbous historians, though a whole perusal would outlast the summer and stretch to the colder months, yet with patience they could be got through. However, before the end was come even a hasty reader whose eye was nimble on the page would be blowing on his nails and pulling his tails between him and the November wind.

But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book, the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a tedious morning "did divert themselves with reading in the booksellers' shops." We may conceive Mr. Fanciful Fopling in the sleepy blink of those early hours before the pleasures of the day have made a start, inquiring between his yawns what latest novels have come down from London, or whether a new part of "Pamela" is offered yet. If the post be in, he will prop himself against the shelf and—unless he glaze and nod—he will read cheaply for an hour. Or my Lady Betty, having taken the waters in the pump-room and lent her ear to such gossip as is abroad so early, is now handed to her chair and goes round by Gregory's to read a bit. She is flounced to the width of the passage. Indeed, until the fashion shall abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop, must remain during her visits in general neglect. Though she hold herself against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against her lap-dog's nose.

But now behold the student coming up the street! He is clad in shining black. He is thin of shank as becomes a scholar. He sags with knowledge. He hungers after wisdom. He comes opposite the bookshop. It is but coquetry that his eyes seek the window of the tobacconist. His heart, you may be sure, looks through the buttons at his back. At last he turns. He pauses on the curb. Now desire has clutched him. He jiggles his trousered shillings. He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure. He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings there are onions ready peeled—quick!—throw them in the skillet that the whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote—eenie meenie—down goes the shilling—he has bought the book. Tonight he will spread it beneath his candle. Feet may beat a snare of pleasure on the pavement, glad cries may pipe across the darkness, a fiddle may scratch its invitation—all the rumbling notes of midnight traffic will tap in vain their summons upon his window.

Any Stick Will Do To Beat A Dog

Reader, possibly on one of your country walks you have come upon a man with his back against a hedge, tormented by a fiend in the likeness of a dog. You yourself, of course, are not a coward. You possess that cornerstone of virtue, a love for animals. If at your heels a dog sniffs and growls, you humor his mistake, you flick him off and proceed with unbroken serenity. It is scarcely an interlude to your speculation on the market. Or if you work upon a sonnet and are in the vein, your thoughts, despite the beast, run unbroken to a rhyme. But pity this other whose heart is less stoutly wrapped! He has gone forth on a holiday to take the country air, to thrust himself into the freer wind, to poke with his stick for such signs of Spring as may be hiding in the winter's leaves. Having been grinding in an office he flings himself on the great round world. He has come out to smell the earth. Or maybe he seeks a hilltop for a view of the fields that lie below patched in many colors, as though nature had been sewing at her garments and had mended the cloth from her bag of scraps.

On such a journey this fellow is travelling when, at a turn of the road, he hears the sound of barking. As yet there is no dog in sight. He pauses. He listens. How shall one know whether the sound comes up a wrathful gullet or whether the dog bays at him impersonally, as at the distant moon? Or maybe he vents himself upon a stubborn cow. Surely it is not an idle tune he practices. He holds a victim in his mind. There is sour venom on his churlish tooth. Is it best to go roundabout, or forward with such a nice compound of innocence, boldness and modesty as shall satisfy the beast? If one engross oneself on something that lies to the lee of danger, it allays suspicion. Or if one absorb oneself upon the flora—a primrose on the river's brim—it shows him clear and stainless. The stupidest dog should see that so close a student can have no evil in him. Perhaps it would be better to throw away one's stick lest it make a show of violence. Or it may be concealed along the outer leg. Ministers of Grace defend us, what an excitement in the barnyard! Has virtue no reward? Shall innocence perish off the earth? Not one dog, but many, come running out. There has gone a rumor about the barn that there is a stranger to be eaten, and it's likely—if they keep their clamor—there will be a bone for each. Note how the valor oozes from the man of peace! Observe his sidling gait, his skirts pulled close, his hollowed back, his head bent across his shoulder, his startled eye! Watch him mince his steps, lest a lingering heel be nipped! Listen to him try the foremost dog with names, to gull him to a belief that they have met before in happier circumstances! He appeals mutely to the farmhouse that a recall be sounded. The windows are tightly curtained. The heavens are comfortless.

You remember the fellow in the play who would have loved war had they not digged villainous saltpetre from the harmless earth. The countryside, too, in my opinion, would be more peaceful of a summer afternoon were it not overrun with dogs. Let me be plain! I myself like dogs—sleepy dogs blinking in the firelight, friendly dogs with wagging tails, young dogs in their first puppyhood with their teeth scarce sprouted, whose jaws have not yet burgeoned into danger, and old dogs, too, who sun themselves and give forth hollow, toothless, reassuring sounds. When a dog assumes the cozy habits of the cat without laying off his nobler nature, he is my friend. A dog of vegetarian aspect pleases me. Let him bear a mild eye as though he were nourished on the softer foods! I would wish every dog to have a full complement of tail. It's the sure barometer of his warm regard. There's no art to find his mind's construction in the face. And I would have him with not too much curiosity. It's a quality that brings him too often to the gate. It makes him prone to sniff when one sits upon a visit. Nor do I like dogs addicted to sudden excitement. Lethargy becomes them better. Let them be without the Gallic graces! In general, I like a dog to whom I have been properly introduced, with an exchange of credentials. While the dog is by, let his master take my hand and address me in softest tones, to cement the understanding! At bench-shows I love the beasts, although I keep to the middle of the aisle. The streets are all the safer when so many of the creatures are kept within.

Frankly, I would enjoy the country more, if I knew that all the dogs were away on visits. Of course, the highroad is quite safe. Its frequent traffic is its insurance. Then, too, the barns are at such a distance, it is only a monstrous anger can bring the dog. But if you are in need of direction you select a friendly white house with green shutters. You swing open the gate and crunch across the pebbles to the door. To the nearer eye there is a look of "dog" about the place. Or maybe you are hot and thirsty, and there is a well at the side of the house. Is it better to gird yourself to danger or to put off your thirst until the crossroads where pop is sold?

Or a lane leads down to the river. Even at this distance you hear the shallow brawl of water on the stones. A path goes off across a hill, with trees beckoning at the top. There is a wind above and a wider sweep of clouds. Surely, from the crest of the hill the whole county will lie before you. Such tunes as come up from the world below—a school-bell, a rooster crowing, children laughing on the road, a threshing machine on the lower meadows—such tunes are pitched to a marvellous softness. Shall we follow the hot pavement, or shall we dare those lonely stretches?

There is a kind of person who is steeped too much in valor. He will cross a field although there is a dog inside the fence. Goodness knows that I would rather keep to the highroad with such humility as shall not rouse the creature. Or he will shout and whistle tunes that stir the dogs for miles. He slashes his stick against the weeds as though in challenge. One might think that he went about on unfeeling stalks instead of legs as children walk on stilts, or that a former accident had clipped him off above the knees and that he was now jointed out of wood to a point beyond the biting limit. Or perhaps the clothes he wears beneath—the inner mesh and very balbriggan of his attire—is of so hard a texture that it turns a tooth. Be these defenses as they may, note with what bravado he mounts the wall! One leg dangles as though it were baited and were angling for a bite.

There is a French village near Quebec whose population is chiefly dogs. It lies along the river in a single street, not many miles from the point where Wolfe climbed to the Plains of Abraham. There are a hundred houses flat against the roadway and on the steps of each there sits a dog. As I went through on foot, each of these dogs picked me up, examined me nasally and passed me on, not generously as though I had stood the test, but rather in deep suspicion that I was a queer fellow, not to be penetrated at first, but one who would surely be found out and gobbled before coming to the end of the street. As long as I would eventually furnish forth the common banquet, it mattered not which dog took the first nip. Inasmuch as I would at last be garnished for the general tooth, it would be better to wait until all were gathered around the platter. "Good neighbor dog," each seemed to say, "you too sniff upon the rogue! If he be honest, my old nose is much at fault." Meantime I padded lightly through the village, at first calling on the dogs by English names, but later using such wisps as I had of French. "Aucassin, mon pauvre chien. Voici, Tintagiles, alors donc mon cherie. Je suis votre ami," but with little effect.

But the dogs that one meets in the Canadian woods are of the fiercest breed. They border on the wolf. They are called huskies and they are so strong and so fleet of foot that they pull sleds for hours across the frozen lakes at almost the speed of a running horse. It must be confessed that they are handsome and if it happens to be your potato peelings and discarded fish that they eat, they warm into friendliness. Indeed, on these occasions, one can make quite a show of bravery by stroking and dealing lightly with them. But once upon a time in an ignorant moment two other campers and myself followed a lonely railroad track and struck off on a path through the pines in search of a certain trapper on a fur farm. The path went on a broken zigzag avoiding fallen trees and soft hollows, conducting itself on the whole with more patience than firmness. We walked a quarter of a mile, but still we saw no cabin. The line of the railroad had long since disappeared. An eagle wheeled above us and quarrelled at our intrusion. Presently to test our course and learn whether we were coming near the cabin, we gave a shout. Immediately out of the deeper woods there came a clamor that froze us. Such sounds, it seemed, could issue only from bloody and dripping jaws. In a panic, as by a common impulse we turned and ran. Yet we did not run frankly as when the circus lion is loose, but in a shamefaced manner—an attempt at a retreat in good order—something between a walk and a run. At the end of a hundred yards we stopped. No dogs had fallen on us. Danger had not burst its kennel. We hallooed again, to rouse the trapper. At last, after a minute of suspense, came his answering voice, the sweetest sound to be imagined. Whereupon I came down from my high stump which I had climbed for a longer view.

I am convinced that I am not alone in my—shall I say diffidence?—toward dogs. Indeed, there is evidence from the oldest times that mankind, in its more honest moments, has confessed to a fear of dogs. In recognition of this general fear, the unmuzzled Cerberus was put at the gate of Hades. It was rightly felt that when the unhappy pilgrims got within, his fifty snapping heads were better than a bolt upon the door. It was better for them to endure the ills they had, than be nipped in the upper passage. He, also, who first spoke the ancient proverb, Let sleeping dogs lie, did no more than voice the caution of the street. And he, also, who invented the saying that the world is going to the bow-wows, lodged his deplorable pessimism in fitting words.

It was Daniel who sat with the lions. But there are degrees of bravery. On Long Street, within sight of my window—just where the street gets into its most tangled traffic—there has hung for many years the painted signboard of a veterinary surgeon. Its artist was in the first flourish of youth. Old age had not yet chilled him when he mixed his gaudy colors. The surgeon's name is set up in modest letters, but the horse below flames with color. What a flaring nostril! What an eager eye! How arched the neck! Here is a wrath and speed unknown to the quadrupeds of this present Long Street. Such mild-eyed, accumbent, sharp-ribbed horses as now infest the curb—mere whittlings from a larger age—hang their heads at their degeneracy. Indeed, these horses seem to their owners not to be worth the price of a nostrum. If disease settles in them, let them lean against a post until the fit is past! And of a consequence, the doctor's work has fallen off. It has become a rare occasion when it is permitted him to stroke his chin in contemplation of some inner palsy. Therefore to give his wisdom scope, the doctor some time since announced the cellar of the building to be a hospital for dogs. Must I press the analogy? I have seen the doctor with bowl and spoon in hand take leave of the cheerful world. He opens the cellar door. A curdling yelp comes up the stairs. In the abyss below there are twenty dogs at least, all of them sick, all dangerous. Not since Orion led his hunting pack across the heavens has there been so fierce a sound. The door closes. There is a final yelp, such as greets a bone. Doubtless, by this time, they are munching on the doctor. Good sir, had you lived in pre-apostolic days, your name would have been lined with Daniel's in the hymn. I might have spent my earliest treble in your praise.

But there are other kinds of dogs. Gentlest of readers, have you ever passed a few days at Tunbridge Wells? It lies on one of the roads that run from London to the Channel and for several hundred years persons have gone there to take the waters against the more fashionable ailments. Its chief fame was in the days when rich folk, to ward off for the season a touch of ancestral gout, travelled down from London in their coaches. We may fancy Lord Thingumdo crossing his sleek legs inside or putting his head to the window on the change of horses. He has outriders and a horn to sound his coming. His Lordship has a liver that must be mended, but also he has a weakness for the gaming table. Or Lady Euphemia, wrapped in silks, languishes mornings in her lodgings with a latest novel, but goes forth at noon upon the Pantilles to shop in the stalls. A box of patches must be bought. A lace flounce has caught her eye. Bless her dear eyes, as she bends upon her purchase she is fair to look upon. The Grand Rout is set for tonight. Who knows but that the Duke will put the tender question and will ask her to name the happy day?

But these golden days are past. Tunbridge Wells has sunk from fashion. The gaming tables are gone. A band still plays mornings in the Pantilles—or did so before the war—but cheaper gauds are offered in the shops. Emerald brooches are fallen to paste. In all the season there is scarcely a single demand for a diamond garter. If there were now a Rout, the only dancers would be stiff shadows from the past. The healing waters still trickle from the ground and an old woman serves you for a penny, but the miracle has gone. The old world is cured and dead.

Tunbridge Wells is visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands—to judge by the black lace caps—have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the hotel where I stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next table. This was their conversation:

"Did you hear her last night?"

"Was it Flossie that I heard?"

"Yes. The poor dear was awake all night. She got her feet wet yesterday when I let her run upon the grass."

But after breakfast—if the day is sunny and the wind sits in a favoring quarter—one by one the widows go forth in their chairs. These are wicker contrivances that hang between three wheels. Burros pull them, and men walk alongside to hold their bridles. Down comes the widow. Down comes a maid with her wraps. Down comes a maid with Flossie. The wraps are adjusted. The widow is handed in. Her feet are wound around with comforters against a draft. Her salts rest in her lap. Her ample bag of knitting is safe aboard. Flossie is placed beside her. Proot! The donkey starts.

All morning the widow sits in the Pantilles and listens to the band and knits. Flossie sits on the flagging at her feet with an intent eye upon the ball of worsted. Twice in a morning—three times if the gods are kind—the ball rolls to the pavement. Flossie has been waiting so long for this to happen. It is the bright moment of her life—the point and peak of happiness. She darts upon it. She paws it exultantly for a moment. Brief is the rainbow and brief the Borealis. The finger of Time is swift.

The poppy blooms and fades. The maid captures the ball of worsted and restores it.

It lies in the widow's lap. The band plays. The needles click to a long tune. The healing waters trickle from the ground. The old woman whines their merits. Flossie sits motionless, her head cocked and her eye upon the ball. Perhaps the god of puppies will again be good to her.

did not appear at the time appointed. The others were extremely desirous of going to look after them; but Baker, knowing their ways full well, thought it better to lose the services of the sixty-seven men rather than to allow this; for he felt sure if they once returned to search for their companions there would be no chance of seeing a single one of them again.

After many perils he reached the territory of Kabbu Rega on the Victoria Nile. The king was apparently friendly at first. But on several occasions the war drums sounded, and although no violence was actually offered yet Sir Samuel thought it well to be on his guard.

He therefore set his men to work to build a strong fort. They cut thick logs of wood, and planted them firmly in the ground, prepared fireproof rooms for the ammunition, and were in the course of a few days ready in case of emergency.

These preparations had been made none too soon.

[Illustration: Burning the king's Divan and Huts.]

A few days later a very strange thing happened. The king sent Sir Samuel a present of some jars of cider. This he gave to his troops. A little while afterwards one of his officers rushed in to say the men had been poisoned.

It was really so. The men who had drunk of the cider were lying about in terrible pain, and apparently dying. At once Sir Samuel gave them mustard and water and other emetics, and they were soon better. But he knew that trouble was at hand.

Next morning he was standing at the entrance to the fort with one of his men when a chorus of yells burst upon his ear. He told his bugler to sound the alarm, and was walking towards the house to get a rifle when the man beside him fell shot through the heart.

The fort was surrounded by thousands of natives, who kept up a continuous fire, and the bushes near at hand were full of sharp-shooters. But the fort was strong, and its defenders fought bravely; the woods were gradually cleared of sharp-shooters, and the natives, ere long, broke and fled.

Then Sir Samuel sent a detachment out of the fort, and set fire to the king's divan and to the surrounding huts to teach the people a lesson for their treachery.

But the place was full of foes. A poisoned spear was thrown at Sir Samuel, and every day he remained his force was in danger of destruction, so he determined to go on to King Riongo, whom he hoped would be more friendly.

It is wonderful that the party ever got there. First of all it was found that they would probably be a week without provisions; but, happily, Lady Baker had put by some supplies, and great was the rejoicing when her forethought became known.

Then it was discovered that the country through which they had to pass was full of concealed foes. From the long grass and bushes spears were constantly hurled at them, and not a few of the men were mortally wounded. Sir Samuel saw several lances pass close to his wife's head, and he narrowly escaped being hit on various occasions.

But, at last, Riongo's territory was reached. The king was friendly, and for a time they were in comparative safety.

By April, 1873, Baker had returned to Gondokoro, and his mission ended. It was, to a great extent, the story of a failure, so far as its main purpose was concerned, owing to the opposition of the men who were making a profit by dealing in slaves; and who, whilst appearing to be friendly, stirred up the natives to attack him. But, failure though it was, he had done all that man could do; and the expedition stands out as one of the most glorious efforts which have been made against overwhelming odds to put an end to the slave trade.

cinated the natives. When her medicine ran out, she took blood from the arms of those who had been vaccinated to use as vaccination medicine.

One day a man came running to the house where Mary was living in Akpap. He had run a long way. He was scratched up and sweating. He had run through the jungle without stopping.

"Ma, Ma," he cried, "the smallpox sickness has come to Ekenge. Chief Ekponyong and Chief Edem are sick and many, many more. Come quick, oh, come to Ekenge or we shall all die."

"I will come with you at once," said Mary to the messenger from Ekenge. "I will help your people fight the smallpox sickness."

Mary went back to Ekenge. The smallpox sickness was very bad. Nearly the whole village was sick.

"We must have a hospital," said Mary. "I know what we will do. We will make my house here a hospital."

Soon the house was filled to overflowing with sick people. She had to be doctor, nurse, and undertaker. Many of her close friends died. Chief Ekponyong, who at first had worked against Mary and then had become her friend, died. Chief Edem, the chief of Ekenge, was very sick. The tired missionary did everything she could to save the old heathen's life. But one dark night he died.

Mary was all alone. Mary made a coffin for the chief. She put his body in it. Then she dug a grave. She dragged the coffin to the grave and buried it. Completely tired out she dragged herself back to Akpap.

Just at this time Mr. Ovens and another missionary came up from Duke Town. They came to Mary's hut at Akpap. All was still and quiet. Mr. Ovens looked at the other missionary.

"Something is wrong," he said. He knocked loudly at the door. He knocked and knocked again. Finally Mary awoke and opened the door. The missionaries saw how tired and sick she looked.

"What is wrong?" asked Ovens.

Mary told them about the sickness at Ekenge. She told them of what she had done. "I don't see how you could have done that work alone," said Mr. Ovens.

"Won't you go and bury the rest of the dead?" asked Mary. "I was just too tired to do it."

"Yes, we will," said Mr. Ovens. The two missionaries went to Ekenge. There they found the mission house filled with dead bodies. They buried these people and preached to those who were still living about the Saviour.

Mary was weak and sick, but she kept right on working. In one of her letters to a friend she tells about some of her work:

Four are at my feet listening. Five boys outside are getting a reading lesson from Janie. A man is lying on the ground who has run away from his master, and is staying with me for safety until I get him forgiven. An old chief is here with a girl who has a bad sore on her arm. A woman is begging me to help her get her husband to treat her better. Three people are here for vaccination.

Every evening she would have family worship. Mary sat on the mud floor in one of the shed rooms. In front of her in a half-circle were the many children she had adopted and was taking care of. Behind them were the baskets holding the twin babies she had recently rescued. The light from a little lamp shone on the bright faces. Mary read slowly from the Bible. Then she explained the Bible reading to the children and prayed. Then she sang a song in the native language. The tune was a Scottish melody and as she sang she kept time with a tamborine. If any of the children did not pay attention, Mary would lean forward and tap his head with the tamborine.

Mary did not get her strength back. She was not well. The mission committee at Calabar decided that even though they had no worker to take her place, she must go home on a vacation which was long overdue.

"But who will take care of the work at Akpap?" asked Mary.

"Mr. Ovens, the carpenter, who is building the mission house at Akpap, can do the work until we find someone to take your place," answered the chairman of the committee.

"But what shall I do with my many black children? I don't want them to go back to heathen ways of living while I am gone. I don't like to ask the other mission workers to take care of them for me."

"Don't worry, Mary. We will find places for them."

Places were found for all the adopted children except the four black children whom she planned to take along with her. These were Janie, who was now sixteen years old, Mary was five, Alice three, and Maggie was only eighteen months old. Now Mary had to find ways of clothing the children. The rags they wore in the jungle would not do for the trip to Scotland. Mary took her trouble to the Lord, and He wonderfully answered her prayer. When she reached Duke Town, she found that a missionary box had just come, and it had just the things she needed.

Mary took her children on board the big ship. It was the biggest "canoe" that any of the children except Janie had ever seen.

"We're on our way to bonny Scotland," said Mary.

#11#

Clouds and Sunshine

"The other missionaries at Calabar," said Mary, "work as hard, if not harder, than I do. We need more workers to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ for your lost black brothers and sisters. They have souls just as you do. Jesus loves them just as He does you. We must tell them of His love. I would like to go farther inland to people who have never heard the Gospel and make a home among the cannibals."

Mary was giving a talk at one of the churches. As soon as she was well enough to make speeches, many of the churches wanted to hear her. The people were very much interested in the black children she had adopted and brought with her. Many of them had never seen black people before. Mary had some trouble speaking in English. For many years now she had been speaking almost all the time in the African language. It was sometimes hard for her to say the right English words, but the Holy Spirit helped her, and the people remembered her talks and gave generously for the work in Africa..

Late in the year 1898 Mary and the black children got on the big "canoe" and sailed back to Africa. They spent a happy Christmas on the ship.

Once more strong and well, Mary went back to work in Akpap. She taught the children and grownups. She healed the sick. She visited in the bush and in the jungle. During this time Mary had the joy of seeing six young men become Christians. These young men she trained and sent to the neighboring villages as Gospel workers. She had hoped for more helpers, but was grateful that God had given her these. More and more of the jungle people heard about her. Bushmen traveled hundreds of miles to see the white Ma who told them about Jesus.

Mary used every chance she had to tell the Gospel to heathen who had never heard it. The stories the visiting people told about their lands and the inland tribes filled Mary with the desire to explore other parts of the country. Often in the mission boat or in a canoe she traveled to villages farther away. On one trip the canoe in which Mary was riding was attacked by a hippopotamus. Mary thought her end had come. Nevertheless, she bravely fought off the animal, using metal cooking pots and pans as weapons.

In the southern part of Nigeria was a strong, wild tribe called the Aros. They were a proud but wicked people. They made war on peaceful tribes. They would steal people from peaceful villages and make them slaves. They prayed to the Devil, and they killed people as human sacrifices to please their idols. They were cannibals who ate people.

The government decided to make this tribe stop doing these bad things. A small band of soldiers was sent against this tribe to make them obey. This made Mary sad. She knew that sending soldiers to fight against these people would not change them. She knew that only the Gospel could change the black men's hearts. She wished she could go to this tribe with the Gospel of Jesus, but the government said no. The government officers feared there might be a tribal war which would even come to Okoyong. They decided that Mary would be safer in Creek Town than Akpap. Sadly Mary left her friends and spent three months in Creek Town.

Her Okoyong friends did not forget her. They came often to visit her and brought her gifts. They also brought their quarrels to her to settle. They called her their queen. Finally, Mary was allowed to go back to Akpap.

Three years went by. It was now fifteen years since Mary had first come to Okoyong. On the anniversary of the day that she came a celebration was held. Seven young men whom Mary had won for Christ were baptized. The Rev. W.T. Weir, a missionary from Creek Town, helped in organizing the first Okoyong Christian Church. The following Sunday the church was filled to overflowing. Mary presented eleven children for baptism. The Lord's Supper was served for the first time to natives and white workers who had accepted Christ as their Saviour. After songs had been sung and speeches made by others, Mary got up to speak.

"You must build a church large enough to take care of all who come to hear God's Word. Okoyong now looks to you who have accepted Christ as your Saviour and who have joined the church for proof of the power of the Gospel, more than it looks to me. I am very happy over all that has been done these past fifteen years, but it is God who did it. To Him belongs all the glory. Mission houses, schools, and a church have been built. Wicked heathen customs have been stopped. Chiefs have quit fighting, and women are much better off than they were when I came. Let us praise God for this and let us go on and do greater things. The Lord will help us and will bless our work."

Mary was happy the way the work was going, but she was not satisfied. She wanted to go to other places.

"This cannibal land of deep darkness with woods of spooky mystery is like a magnet," said Mary Slessor. "It draws me on and on."

"Where is this country where you want to work?" asked Miss Wright, one of the teachers at the Girls' Institute at Calabar.

"It lies to the west of the Cross River. It stretches for miles and miles toward the Niger River."

"Haven't any missionaries been there?"

"None have gone into the forest. Missionaries and traders have gone along the edge of it when they went up the Cross River."

"What tribes live in this dark and mysterious country?" asked Miss Wright.

"The Ibo tribe lives in most of the country, but they are ruled by the Aros clan," said Mary.

"Who are they? Tell me something about them, Mary. I know so little about the tribes, except those who come to Calabar or send their girls to our Institute."

"The Aros clan are a wise but tricky people. They live in thirty villages near the district of Arochuku, where I would like to begin a mission. They are strong and rule the Ibo tribe because of their trade and religion. They trade slaves, which their religion furnishes. When they cannot get enough slaves that way, they raid Ibo villages and capture the people who live there and sell them."

"You say their religion furnishes them with slaves? How is that possible?"

"The Ibo tribe and the Aros pray to the juju god. They believe the juju god lives in a tree. They think this tree is holy. Each village has its own god and sacred tree, but the main juju used to be about a mile from Arochuku."

"But you haven't told me about the slaves," interrupted Miss Wright.

"I am just coming to that," said Mary. "This main juju, called the Long Juju, was reached by a winding road that goes through a dense jungle and leads at last to a lake. In the center of the lake is an island on which was the Long Juju. Here hundreds of people came to ask advice from the priests and to worship. When the people came here, the Aros clan had captured them. Then they were either sold as slaves, sacrificed to juju, or eaten by the tribe."

"How terrible!"

"The Aros are tricky. One of their tricks, was to throw some of the people they captured into the water. The water at once turned red. The priests would tell the people that juju had eaten the men. The people believed it, but really the red was only coloring the priests had thrown into the river."

"Is the juju still there?" asked Miss Wright.

"No. The British soldiers went over the Cross River. They had a battle with the natives and beat them. They captured Arochuku. Then they chopped down the Long Juju. But of course the natives still have their village jujus. They still do many wicked things."

"And you want to work among those terrible people?"

"Yes, don't you think they have a great need for the Gospel?"

"Oh, they do! But I would not have the courage to work among them."

"I have no courage," said Mary, "except what God gives me."

"Tell me, Mary, have you gone into that country at all?"

"I have made some short exploration trips. I told the traders to tell the chiefs that some day I would come to their country to live, but their only answer was, 'It is not safe.' That is what the people told me when I wanted to go to Okoyong. I trust in my heavenly Father and I am not afraid of the cannibals no matter how fierce and cruel they may be."

"But Mary, did you know that when a chief died recently, fifty or more people were eaten at the funeral ceremonies, and twenty-five others had their heads cut off and were buried with the chief?"

"Yes, I heard that. But things were almost as bad when I came to Okoyong. God blessed my work, and He can protect me in this strange new land of the cannibals. I do hope the Mission Board will let me go and work among the Aros and Ibos."

The missionaries in Calabar wanted Mary to work at Ikorofiong and at Unwana, which were two towns farther up the Cross River from Akpap. But Mary did not think these were good places for her work. She wanted to be where she could reach the most people. She wanted to work at Arochuku, the chief city of Aros which was also near the Efik, Ibo and Ibibio tribes. She wanted to open her first station at Itu, which was on the mouth of Enyong creek, her second station at Arochuku and a third at Bende. The missionaries at Calabar did not agree, but they decided to wait until a worker could be found to take Mary's place at Akpap. Mary would not reave these people until they could be taken care of by Christian workers.

"Send a minister to take care of a station. I cannot build up a church the way a minister can," said Mary.

It looked as though Mary would not get to go to the land of Aros. Then Miss Wright, the teacher from the Girls' Institute, asked to be sent to Akpap as an assistant. This request was sent to Scotland for the Board to approve. Mary now decided to start work at once. In January, 1903, with two boys, Esien and Efiiom, and a girl, Mana, whom she had carefully trained, she loaded her canoe with food and other supplies and set off for the land of the cruel cannibals.

They did not know how the people there would treat them, but they trusted in God to take care of them and help them in their work. Mary found a house for them.

"I am leaving you here," said Mary to the three natives, "to begin a school and hold church services for the people of Itu. I must go back to Akpap but I will come again as soon as I can."

But Mary had to stay at Akpap longer than she expected. At last she was able to come again to Itu and to visit the school and the church services.

"You have done wonderfully well," she told the three workers. "God has blessed your work. My heart was filled with joy when I saw so many people, young and old, at the services. And your school is filled with people who want to learn book and learn the will of God. Now we must build a church and a schoolhouse."

Mary began mixing the mud and doing the other work that was necessary for building a building in Africa. The native workers and the people of Itu helped her gladly. It did not take long with many willing hands to build a church and school. Two rooms were added to the church building.

"These two rooms are for you, Ma," the people said. "You must have a place to stay when you come to us."

After the church and school were built, Mary went back to Akpap. Here she heard good news.

"The Board in Scotland has given me permission to be your assistant at
Akpap," said Miss Wright.

"Wonderful!" said Mary. "Now I can spend more time at Itu and more time in the jungle."

On a beautiful morning in June, 1903, Mary packed her clothes and supplies and marched the six miles down to the landing beach at Ikunetu. Here she waited for the government boat which would take her to Itu. She waited and waited. At last she found one of the natives and asked, "Where is the government boat? Is it late?"

"No, Ma, it long time gone."

So Mary had to walk back six miles through the jungle to the mission house at Akpap.

"Why, Mary," said Miss Wright, "what are you doing here? I thought that by this time you would be traveling on the government boat to Itu."

"I am in God's hands," said Mary, "and He did not mean for me to travel today. I have been kept back for some good purpose."

The next week when she again made the trip to board the boat, Colonel Montanaro who commanded the government soldiers in that part of the country, was on the boat.

"I will be happy to have you travel with me and my soldiers," said the colonel. "You will be safer that way. I am going to Arochuku."

"That is just what I would like to do," said Mary. "Now I see why God did not let me travel last week. I have been wanting for a long time to visit the chief city of the Aros. I want to see more about this juju religion."

Some time before, the government had sent soldiers into the country to make the chiefs stop the juju worship. The chiefs had promised to stop it, but it still went on secretly. After reaching Arochuku, Mary followed the jungle paths over which the slaves had been made to walk for hundreds of years. She came to the place of the Long Juju. There Mary saw the human skulls, the bones and the pots in which the bodies had been cooked. Mary shivered when she thought of the cannibal feasts.

Mary thought the people might be against her, but instead they welcomed her. They had heard about the good things she had done in the jungle.

"O God," prayed Mary, "I want to bring the Gospel to these man-eaters for whom Christ died. Please, dear God, make the home church and the Mission Board see the great need here so that they will let me win this part of the country for Christ."

Mary promised the people of Arochuku she would come again and open a school. Then she returned to Akpap and wrote the Mission Board for permission to open a station at Arochuku. Soon the answer came back!

We are sorry, but it will be impossible at this time to open work at
Arochuku. We do not have the money or the workers.

#12#

Among the Cannibals

"The mission Board says that they cannot open a mission station at Arochuku now," said Mary. "I have asked God to give me a mission station where His Gospel can be preached to the Aros. I trust in Christ who is able to do more than I am able to ask or think. I know God will give me what I have asked."

"What are you going to do now?" asked Miss Wright.

"I am going to do what I believe God wants me to do. I am going to take some native Christians and make a beginning in the land of the Aros."

Mary took some native boys whom she had trained. They were able to help with school-work and church services. Mary and the boys went to Amasu, a little village which was nearer the creek than Arochuku. Here she opened a school. It was soon filled with boys and girls thirsty for book and the loving God. She held church services for the people, and many of them came to hear the white Ma teach about Jesus.

At last it was time for Mary to go back to Akpap. She left the native Christians to carry on the work of the school and church. The people of the village gathered around her. They said,

"Come again soon, white Ma. If you do not care for us, who will care for us?"

As Mary went down the river in her canoe, she thanked God that He had let her open this new field to the Gospel. Suddenly there was a canoe barring her way. In it was a tall native.

"I have been waiting for you. My master at Akani Obio sent me to stop you and bring you to his house."

Mary told her rowers to follow the native to his master's place. Soon they came to a trading place. Here Mary was greeted by a handsome young man.

"I am Onoyom Iya Nya, the president of the court and the chief of this district. This is my wife. Won't you please honor us by coming into our house?"

Onoyom and his wife led Mary to a European-type house, which was very nicely furnished. Onoyom's wife invited Mary to have some food with them. While they ate, Onoyom talked.

"Many times I have sent my servants to find you," said Onoyom, "but they never found you until today. I am happy that you have come."

"But why did you seek me? Why did you want me to come to you?" asked Mary.

"When I was a boy," said Onoyom, "I served as a guide to a missionary. He told me the Gospel story. I wanted Jesus for my Saviour. But my tribe beat me and punished me in other ways until I gave up the white man's religion and followed the juju religion of the tribe. I took part in Arochuku feasts where we ate 'long pig,' that is, men and women."

"But why do you want to talk to me?" asked Mary.

"I never forgot what the missionary told me about Christ. Later I had troubles and sickness. I tried witchcraft to find the person who placed the troubles and sickness on me. Instead, I met a white man. He said to me, 'How do you know it is not the God of the white man who is angry with you? He is all-powerful.' I said, 'How can I find this God?' I hoped he would tell me, but he said, 'I am not worthy to tell you. Find the white Ma who goes to Itu and she will tell you.' O Ma, please tell us about your God."

Tears of joy ran down Mary's cheeks. Onoyom called all the members of his family and the servants together. Mary told them of Jesus and His power to save them. She read from the Bible, prayed with the people, and promised to come back again on her next trip.

"I will build a church for you," said Chief Onoyom. "I have money. I will give $1,500 for a mission house and school."

As Mary rode down the Enyong creek she thought of the new missionary work that was opening up.

"O God," she prayed, "I thank You for the new places at Itu and Amasu. I thank You for the chance to build a church at Akani Obio. Please let me open a station soon at Arochuku. There with Your blessing I hope to conquer the cannibals for Christ."

"I do hope," she said to herself, "that the Board will soon send an ordained minister to take over the Akpap station. I must persuade Miss Wright to go with me to Itu. I am sure God will give her courage to come with me. This Enyong creek region will give us all the work for Christ we can handle and more. We must go forward for Christ."

Mary made many trips to Akpap, to Itu and Amasu. She stopped at many little villages and lonely huts along Enyong creek to tell the people about the Saviour who had died also for those with black skins. Often she slept on mud floors. She ate yams and native fruits.

God blessed the work at Itu and Amasu. The people of Itu built a church and more than three hundred of them attended the services. At Amasu the school pew fast. The natives were learning to read.

The natives at Itu started to build a six-room house at Itu for Mary. It was to be one of the finest homes in which the missionary had ever lived.

"I am afraid it is too much work for you," said Mary to the natives. "It is too big." "No, it is not too much." said the people of Itu. "Nothing is too much to do for you. We shall do it."

Another time a native woman knelt at Mary's feet. She washed Mary's tired feet in warm water.

"You are so kind to me," said Mary thanking her.

"I have been so afraid, Ma, that you would think us unworthy of a teacher and take her away," said the woman. "I could not live again in darkness. I pray all the time. I lay my basket down and pray on the road."

"That is good," said Mary. "Prayer can do anything. I know. I have tested it. Of course, God does not always answer our prayers the way we want them answered, but He does answer them and in the way that is best for us. Trust God always."

One day Mary thought of a new plan she wanted to try out. She had been in
the jungle for five years. She was due to get a year's vacation at home in
Scotland. Instead of this she asked for something else. She wrote to the
Mission Board:

I would like to have leave from the mission station at Akpap for six months. This time I would spend traveling between Okoyong and Amasu. I would visit many places which I do not have time to visit now. Already I have seen a church and a mission house built at Itu, and a school and a couple of rooms at Amasu. I have visited several towns at Enyong and have found good enough places to stay.

I shall find my own canoe and crew. I shall stay at any one place just as long as I think wise. The members of my family [she meant the twins and slave children and other unwanted children she had adopted] shall help in teaching the beginners in the schools.

I plan to live at Itu as my headquarters. I will look after the small schools I have started at Idot and Eki. I will visit and work for Jesus in the towns on both sides of Enyong creek all the way to Amasu. I will live there for a while or travel among the Aros telling them of Jesus. Then I will come back by easy stages to Itu and home.

Please send an assistant to help Miss Wright at Akpap, so I will be free to do this new work in the jungle. I would like Miss Wright to help me with some work among the cannibals, in some places, so that I will have more time for pioneer work in the places farther away.

Itu should be our main station. We can reach the various tribes best from it. It is the gateway to the Aros and the Ibibios and near many other tribes. That is why it became a slave market. It could be reached so easily. It is only a day's journey from the seaport of the ocean steamers, having waterway all the year round and a good beach front. Itu is a natural place for our upriver and downriver work to come together.

Mary was now fifty-six years old. She had suffered much from sickness and from the lack of many things. Now she wanted to go on a "gypsying tour of the jungle," as she called it. This was hard and difficult work. There were many dangers from wild animals and wild people. These tribes she wanted to visit did not know anything about the Saviour, or God's Word, but they did know how to do many wicked things like killing and eating people. Many a younger and stronger person than Mary would be afraid to tackle the job she had planned to do. Mary was not afraid. God had given her the chance to reach the wild cannibals. She was willing to die trying to bring the Gospel to them.

"I am willing to go anywhere," said Mary, "provided it be forward among the cannibals."

Mary anxiously waited for the answer from the Mission Board giving her permission to work for six months in the cannibal country. The answer did not come and did not come. At last she decided to go on a short trip through that country to encourage the black workers she had sent there. She went to see the Wilkies and Miss Wright.

"I am going on a short trip through the cannibal country," said Mary. "I am inviting you to be my guests on this trip. I want you to see what God is doing among the cannibals. Won't you come with me?"

"We'll be glad to go with you," said Mr. Wilkie.

Mary and her friends first visited Itu, where they met Colonel Montanaro, who had first taken Mary to Itu. Then they went to Akani Obio. Here Chief Onoyom had a big party for them.

"Ma, when are you going to come and stay a long time with us?" he asked. "I want you to bring the Gospel to me and to my people."

"I hope it will be soon," said Mary. "I am praying every day that the
Mission Board will let me work in your country."

Mary and her friends now went to Amasu to see the Gospel work that was being done there. Then they visited the villages around Arochuku where the Long Juju was. Then they started back to Akpap. They visited many very small villages on the way back. Everywhere the people said to them, "We want to learn book." They meant they wanted someone to teach them to read the Bible.

At last they arrived at Akpap. Here there was the letter from the Mission Board. Mary's hands shook as she opened the long-awaited letter. Would it give her permission to go to cannibal land or would it tell her to come home and take her furlough in the usual way?

You may make the jungle trip that you plan, but you will have to pay your own expenses during this time. We do not have any money for that work.

Mary was happy. Mary took the little money she had and bought supplies at Duke Town. Then she got her canoe ready. She took a crew of black rowers to row the canoe and a group of the black children she had adopted.

"It seems strange to be starting with a family on a gypsy life in a canoe," wrote Mary, "but God will take care of us. Whether I shall find His place for me upriver or whether I shall come back to my own people again, I do not know. He knows and that is enough."

At last Mary and her group of travelers came to Itu, which was deep in cannibal land. Mary had started the work here and then left native workers to carry on. Now there were three hundred people in the church. Mary found that the mission house at Itu was not finished. Mary herself mixed the cement for the floor while Janie did the whitewashing. Someone asked Mary how she learned to make cement.

"I just stir it like oatmeal, then turn it out smooth with a stick and all the time I keep praying, `Lord, here's the cement. If it is to Your glory, set it,' and it has never gone wrong."

Every day Mary made calls and helped to solve the problems of the people of Itu. In the evenings she would hold prayer in the yards of many of the people. Always Mary told the people of the Saviour who died for them.

The news that Mary the white Ma was in cannibal land soon spread far and wide. The tom-toms calling through the jungle told the different tribes where Mary was. From Ibibio southward, the natives sent messages to Mary.

"Please, Ma," they said, "send us a teacher."

"It is not `book' I want," said a chief in his message, "I want God."

"We have three in hand for a teacher," said Chief Onoyom of Akani Obio. "Some of the boys have already finished the books Mr. Wilkie gave us. We can do no more until you send us help."

Mary spent the night praying to God to send more workers to Africa. "O Britain," said Mary, "filled full of ministers and church workers, but tired of Sunday and of church, I wish that you could send over to us what you are throwing away!"

#13#

Blessings Unnumbered

God blessed Mary's work in cannibal land and more and more people were won for Jesus. Chief Onoyom stayed true to his faith.

"Come," he said to his people, "we must build a church here at Akani
Obio. Let us go to the jungle and cut down trees for the house of God."

Chief Onoyom and his people went to the woods. The chief went to a tree and got ready to cut it down.

"Chief," they cried, "you are not going to cut that tree, are you? You know that is the juju tree."

"I know it is the juju tree," said Onoyom, "and I am going to chop it down."

"The juju will be angry. He will not let us. He will kill us," cried the people.

"Ma's God is stronger than our juju," said Chief Onoyom. "Cut it down."

The people began to chop. The trunk of the tree was thick. After a while they stopped.

"See, we cannot cut it," they said.

The heathen natives were glad.

"Aha," they said, "our juju is stronger than Ma's God."

The next morning Chief Onoyom took some men who wanted to be Christians. Before beginning to chop at the tree they knelt and prayed that the white Ma's God would prove stronger than the juju. Then they got up and began to chop. Soon the tree fell with a mighty crash. Ma's God had won!

The juju tree was used for a pulpit and seats in the church building. A large group of people came to the dedication services. They were quiet and well-behaved. What a great change the Gospel had made! Only two years before the people were wild savages.

Mary had to hold services at Arochuku out-doors, but now the people built a church and a schoolhouse. At other villages along Enyong creek congregations were organized, and churches and schoolhouses were built.

In 1905 Mary had to go to the Mission Council meeting at Calabar. During the meeting Mary was called on to tell about her work.

"God has done great things in cannibal land. We have congregations at Itu, Arochuku, Oko, Akani Obio, Odot, Amasu, and Asang. In all of these places churches have been built. In many of them we have built schoolhouses too. Many of the cannibals are being won for Christ. But we need more workers. In all this wide country of the Aros, I am the only white missionary. My six months' leave is almost up. Who will take care of these people who are as dear to God as you or I? Now they are being taken care of by native workers, but these have only little training. Send workers to cannibal land to change these man-eaters into Christians."

The Council was thrilled by Mary's report. They voted that she could spend six more months in cannibal land, but again they said she would have to pay her own expenses. This did not bother Mary. She had never been paid, much salary. In the first years she sent most of it back home to take care of her mother and sister. After they had died she used me most of it for her colored Christians. She had adopted many black children whose parents had thrown them out. But money never bothered Mary. She had a little bit saved up. She was happy that she could go to cannibal, land and win souls for Christ.

"But where shall I work now?" Mary asked herself. "Shall I keep on working on upper Enyong creek or shall I go south to the Ibibios? The Ibibios are the worst heathen in this part of Africa. The worse the people are, the more they need help. I should go to the Ibibios."

Meanwhile the Mission committee in Scotland decided to build a hospital at
Itu. Dr. Robertson was to be the head of it. The Mission committee chose a
name for the hospital. They named it, "The Mary Slessor Mission Hospital."
The people in Scotland gave the money so the hospital could be built.

"It seems like a fairy tale," said Mary when she was told about it, "and I don't know just what to say. I can just look up into the blue sky and say, 'Even so, Father; let me live and be worthy of it all.' It is a grand gift and I am so glad for my people."

Now that Itu was taken care of, Mary had all the more reason to go south to the Ibibios. In their country the government was building roads and setting up courts. The government people wanted Mary to come to that country too, because she knew so much more about the people and customs in cannibal land.

"Get a bicycle, Ma," said one of the government men. "Here is the road. Come as far as you can. And we'll soon have a motorcar for you."

Mary started out. She took along one of the boys she had adopted. It was twelve-year-old Etim. He could read and she needed his help. Once more Mary was beginning mission work in a new part of the country where Christians had never been.

Mary and Etim went to Ibibio-land. Mary started a school and a small congregation. Etim was made the teacher of the school. He proved to be a very good teacher. Soon he had a class of fifty children.

"It is my hope," said Mary, "that Ikotobong will be the first of a chain of stations stretching across the country."

Mary went to visit the old chief of Ikotobong.

"What do you think of our work here?"

"It is good," said the chief. "I am happy you came. There are many things that are strange to me and my people. We do not understand them. I am glad for the light. We will give Etim food as pay for teaching. We will help build a schoolhouse and a church."

Mary was happy that the people were willing and anxious to learn. But she wanted to go to a new part of the country and start more places. The government officer at Ikot Expene gave Mary a bicycle.

"I think it's God's will that I learn to ride this bicycle. Think of an old lady like me on a bicycle!" said Mary. "The new road makes it easy to ride, and I'm running up and down and taking a new work in a village two miles off. It has done me all the good in the world, and I will soon be able to do even more work."

The treatment of the women in Ibibio was very bad. They were treated worse than slaves. The men could do whatever they wanted to do with them. They were often beaten. They were bought and sold like cattle. Mary wanted to help the poor women.

"I want to build a home for girls, orphans, twins and their mothers, and those who have run away from harems," said Mary. "I also want to start a school where trades and skills can be taught. All the women know how to farm. They know how to weave baskets and make simple sandals. But I want them to know many more things so that they can take care of themselves. I am going to look for a place with good land and pure water near the roads and the markets. Then I will write to my friends and to the Mission Board for help."

Mary's furlough had first been for six months and then was made six months longer. In April, 1906, it came to an end. She was supposed to go back to Akpap, because the Mission Council expected her to settle down in one place and work there. They appointed her to work at Akpap and that is where they expected her to work.

"I do not want to settle in one place," said Mary. "God gives me different gifts; I think my gift is to explore and start new congregations. Others are better fitted to take care of them after they are started than I am. God is pushing me onward. I don't dare look backward. Even if my dear church turns against me and will not have me as its missionary, I must go forward. I can find food for myself and the children. That is all I need. God will help me."

Mary thought and prayed much over this matter. She thought of starting a store or taking a government job so she could earn money to take care of the missionary work. She wrote a long letter to the Mission Board. She told how God had blessed the work at Itu and the villages on Enyong creek. Then she wrote:

In all this how plainly God has been leading me. I did not think of doing these things in my lifetime, but God has led me on. First Itu, and then the Creek, then back from Aro, where I had set my heart, to a lonely, spooky, wilderness. There no one ever went, but now miles of roads are being built.

The Board says I am to go back to Akpap in April. I love no other place on earth so well. But I dare not think of leaving the crowds of untamed, unwashed, unlovely savages, and take away the little sunlight that has begun to flicker out over its darkness.

I know that I am pretty old for this kind of work. But God will help. Whether the church permits or not, I feel that I must stay here. I must even go farther as the roads are made. I cannot walk now and I must be careful of my health. But I can get four wheels made and set a box on them and the children can pull me. I dare not go back. If the Board insists, I will risk finding some other way to support myself and my family.

As April drew closer day by day, Mary anxiously waited for the Mission
Board's answer. The Mission Board wrote to Mary:

We are sending John Rankin to look over the field where you have been working. After he has made his report we will decide what you should do.

Mr. Rankin visited the different places in cannibal land where Mary had started congregations. He talked with the chiefs and the people. One chief talking about Mary and the other women missionaries said, "Them women be the best men for the mission." He wrote to the Board:

Close to Arochuku, within a circle of less than three miles in diameter, there are nineteen large towns. I visited sixteen of these. Each of them is larger than Creek Town. Most of the people are anxious to help. Already many of them have begun to live in God's way. Even the head chief of all the Aros wants us to do mission work in his country. He told the other chiefs he is going to rule according to God's way. He wants missionaries to be sent to his people. He offers to build a house at Arochuku for any missionary who will come.

The Mission Board was thrilled when they read this report. They agreed to give the money for the work which Mary had planned. They appointed Rankin to take charge of the stations at Itu and Arochuku. They agreed to let Mary go into the new territory. She did not have to go back to Akpap.

This made Mary very happy. Now she could work full time among the Ibibios. She offered to pay for the building of a mission station among the Ibibios if there was no money in the homeland treasury. In May the government appointed Mary to take charge of the courts in the Ibibio district as she had done in Okoyong. It paid her for this work so now she had money to carry on her mission work whether the Board paid her or not.

Court was held at Ikotobong. Three chiefs and a jury helped Mary in trying the cases, but Mary's word was law. Mary was fair and kind, but at the same time she saw to it that those who did bad things were punished. In a letter to a friend she wrote:

God help those poor helpless women. They are treated worse than animals. Today I had a crowd of people. How wicked they were! I have had a murder, a poison bean case, a suicide, a man branding his slave wife all over her face and body, a man with a gun who shot four people. It is all horrible.

But her work as judge did not stop her from doing her mission work. Everywhere she went she told the natives of Jesus' death for them. She opened schools and churches for natives. She also was thinking about the other missionaries. She planned a place for them where they could spend weekends or where they could rest when they were getting over sickness. She chose a place half-way between Itu and Ikotobong on Enyong Creek. It was high above the lowlands where most of the sickness was. A friend sent her a check for $100 and Mary used it as a start for this rest home. She had the ground cleared and a small English house built.

Although Mary was busy she was not well. During most of 1906 she had been ailing.

"If you want to keep on with your missionary work," said the government doctor, "you must go home to Scotland where you can rest up and get the fever out of your system."

Mary did not want to leave her work. A few days after her talk with the doctor, when he came to see her again, she was much better.

"It looks as if God wants me to stay. Does that sound like He could not do without me! I do not mean it so. How little I can do! But I can at least keep a door open for missionary work so others can come and do more."

The year 1907 came. Mary was much worse. She could walk only a few steps. When she wanted to go anywhere, she had to be carried. At last she decided to do as the doctor told her and go to Scotland for a vacation.

"Oh, the dear homeland!" she said with tears in her eyes. "Shall I really be there and worship in the churches again? How I long for a look at a winter landscape, to feel the cold wind, and the frost in the cart ruts! How I want to take a back seat in a church and hear the congregation singing, without a care of my own! I want to hear how they preach and pray and rest their souls in the hush and silence of our home churches."

Mary took her six-year-old Dan, one of the many children she had adopted. The government officers were kind and helpful to her in getting ready for her trip.

"God must repay these men," said Mary, "because I cannot. He will not forget that they did it to a child of His, unworthy though she is."

Mary was now a wrinkled, shining-eyed old lady, almost sixty years old. She was carried on board the ship that would take her to Scotland. Her friends, both white and native, cried and wondered if she would ever come back to Africa again.

#14#

Journey's End

"Send us workers for dark Africa," said Mary. "If I can get the Board to send us one or more workers, I will give half my salary to add to theirs. I will give the house for them to live in and find the servants. You who have so much, won't you do something for these poor people of Africa?"

Mary was speaking in the churches of Scotland telling about her work in Africa. After she had returned to Scotland, she felt much better. The air and climate was much better than in the steaming jungles of Africa. As soon as she was strong enough, she began to go about telling about her work. She urged the people to give money and to send workers to Africa.

Above all, she wanted to get money to support the industrial home for women which she had planned. From May until October she went among the churches telling about the "African sheep" whom the Good Shepherd Jesus wanted brought in.

In October Mary asked to be sent back to Africa. She wanted to carry on her work there.

"I am foolish, I know," said Mary, "but I just feel homeless without any relatives here in Scotland. I am a poor, lonesome soul with only memories."

Back in Africa Mary was busier than ever, holding court, looking after her home, and doing missionary work. On Sundays she held a half-dozen or more services in the nearby villages in which lived the people with whom she worked during the week. On some of these trips she brought back orphan children to join her already "overstuffed" household. But all this work was too much for her. She became sick again and very weak. Now her eyes began to get weak, so that she could not see as well. But nothing could stop her. She started the building of the industrial home for women and girls. She planted fruit trees there and planned to raise rubber and cocoa and cattle.

Mary wanted to move again. Some natives had come from Ikpe to see her before she went on her vacation to Scotland. They asked her to bring the Gospel to them. Now they came again.

"We have heard of the great white Mother and we want to learn to be God's men," they said.

Mary made a two-day canoe trip to their town. Ikpe was a large town with many people in it. But the people were very wicked. They did all the wicked heathen things that were against God's commandments. But there were people in it who wanted to become Christians. They had begun to build a small church building to which they had added two rooms for the missionary.

Mary held a service in the church. Many people had gathered to hear for the first time the news of how Jesus saves us. After the end of the service Mary decided that it was God's will for her to move to Ikpe. But she had to arrange for someone to take care of her other work first.

When she came home from this trip she was sick again. As soon as she was a little better she busied herself with the women's home. She wanted to get that running well before she left for Ikpe. The natives of Ikpe sent some more of their people to visit her and beg her to come to Ikpe. Whenever she could, she made trips to that village. Often she took other missionaries with her.

In November, 1909, she resigned from her court work. The government did not like to lose her because she knew so much about the natives and their customs. But the government knew that Mary's first love was her missionary work. They let her give up her court work and thanked her for all she had done.

"Just a few more things to take care of," said Mary, "and I will be ready to start for Ikpe. Those faithful people deserve a worker. They are holding services even though they know very little of Christianity. I must go there. I know God wants it."

It was the year 1910 and Mary was sure that now she could begin her work in the new territory that looked so promising. Suddenly Mary became very, very ill. The government sent its official automobile to take her to the Mary Slessor Hospital at Itu. Did God want Mary to work at Ikpe? Or would someone else preach the Gospel there?

For many weeks Mary lay sick in the hospital at Itu. At last she was much better.

"You must go to Duke Town for a longer rest," said the doctor.

"But, Doctor," said Mary, "I have my work to do, I cannot spend my time lying in bed."

"If you are unwilling to rest at Duke Town, I shall have to send you to
Scotland on a long vacation."

"Very well," sighed Mary, "I will go to Duke Town."

The next day the government sent its boat, the "Maple Leaf," to take Mary down the river to Duke Town. Here she spent many weeks resting and gaining her strength. At last the doctor agreed that she could go back to her work at Ikotobong. Once more the government sent its boat to take her back to her mission station.

"I want to go to Ikpe soon," said Mary, "but first I want to establish a station at Ikot Expene and at other places along the way."

Whenever she felt strong enough, she rode her bicycle through the jungle to Ikot Expene choosing places for schools and churches along the way, talking to chiefs, and getting the things ready for more places where the Gospel could be preached.

The people at Ikpe were holding services even though they knew very little about Christianity.

"Soon the white Ma will come," they said. "She will tell us more about
Jesus."

A native teacher from another station, who had received training from Mary, taught the people what he knew about the Gospel.

"Oh, why cannot the church send two workers to Ikpe?" said Mary. "Why don't they use the money on hand for that? If there isn't enough money left after two years, let them take my salary. I shall be only too glad to live on native food with my children."

Mary was busy collecting building materials and other things for the church of Ikpe. At last the time came. God wanted Mary at Ikpe. How happy Mary was! How happy were the faithful people at Ikpe who had waited so long!

Mary at once was busy with much work. She quieted mobs, she calmed quarreling chiefs, she held meetings with the crowds, and on Sundays conducted services. One day the smallpox broke out. The government sent down men to vaccinate the natives so the sickness would not spread. Mary heard shouting and yelling in the streets. She looked out of her house. The natives were yelling and shouting and waving guns and swords. Mary went up to the crowd.

"What is this?" asked Mary. The crowd kept yelling.

"Be quiet," shouted Mary and held out her hands. "Let your chief speak."

"Ma," said the chief, "my people are afraid of the white man's juju. It makes the people sick." He meant the vaccination.

"The vaccination may make a little sickness, but it keeps you from getting the big sickness," said Mary. Then she told them how vaccination had helped other tribes. She showed them her vaccination. After a long talk with the chiefs and the people the matter was peaceably settled.

Mary wanted to keep in touch with her former headquarters at Ikotobong. She made many canoe trips back and forth. These trips were very hard on her and she did not rest well. Many people wondered how Mary could keep on working, but she trusted God who made her strong to carry on.

During 1911 a tornado struck Mary's house at Use, one of the stations. She fixed the house herself. During this she strained herself and had a heart attack which was followed by a severe fever. Sometimes the fever was so great she was delirious. But still she would not stop working. She continued to teach school and hold worship services on Sunday.

Dr. Hitchcock of the Slessor Hospital came to see her every week.

"You must not go to Ikpe again," he said. "You must not ride your bicycle. You must spend more time resting."

But Mary disobeyed the doctor and held services the following Sunday. It was too much for her. She almost fainted before the service was over.

"You must stay in bed," said Dr. Hitchcock, "until you are well enough to get up."

"All right, doctor," said Mary.

"And you must eat meat twice a day," said the doctor.

"But I'm not a meat-eater," answered Mary.

"You're going to be, or I will send you to Duke Town for a long rest."

Mary laughed. "I've all my plans made and I must not draw a salary without doing something for it."

At last the doctor sent her to the Slessor Hospital for a rest. Because of her hard work, she had a bad fever sickness. Now Mary saw that she was foolish in not listening to the doctor.

"Life is hardly worth living," she said, "but I am doing what I can to help the doctor to help me, so I can be fit again for another spell of work."

The Christians at Ikpe sent some men to see Mary to ask her when she would be back. "Seven weeks," said Dr. Hitchcock.

"I may run up sooner than that," said Mary. "I'm very well if the doctor would only believe it."

Near the end of 1911 Mary was allowed to leave the hospital. She hurried to her friends at Ikpe. But Mary still was not very strong. Her friends in Calabar and in Scotland urged her to take a long-earned furlough. While thinking about this, Mary decided to have a box on wheels made so that she could get around since the doctor would not let her use her bicycle. Some friends heard about this and they sent her a light cart which could be wheeled by two boys or girls.

"Now I don't need a furlough," said Mary. "Instead of going home as I had planned, I shall stay here and enjoy going over ground in my cart that I couldn't get over otherwise."

A new government road was being built between Ikpe and Ikot Expene. Mary wanted to start schools and churches all along this road. But she was not strong enough to carry out her idea. Her heart was very weak now and she had to rest often. If there had been someone to take her place, she would have gone home for a rest. Mary wrote to a friend:

We were never so shorthanded, and I can do what others cannot, what indeed, doctors would not allow them to try. No one meddles with me and I slip along and do my work using less strength than many would have to use.

Mary knew if she took a furlough her work at Ikpe and the other stations would stop because there was no one to take her place. This she did not want to happen. She worked on through the summer of 1912. In September she completed thirty-six years as a missionary in Africa.

"I'm lame and feeble and foolish," said Mary, "but I grip on well."

Her friends were very much worried about her health. It was suggested that she be sent on an expense-paid trip to the Canary Islands. There the climate was milder than it would have been in Scotland during the winter. She was glad to go. Mary wrote:

What love is wrapped around me! It is simply wonderful. I can't say anything else. Oh, if I only get another day to work. I hope it will be fuller of earnestness and blessing than the past.

This vacation was a real blessing to Mary. The fevers left her. With no committee meetings, no court cases or other problems to worry about, she grew stronger very quickly. It was not many months before she was back at Duke Town. The doctor gave her an examination.

"You're as sound as an elephant's ivory tusk," said the doctor. "You are good for many years, if you will only take care."

Mary did not like that. She had never been willing to sit and twiddle her thumbs. Now her mind was full of new plans for more work. She wanted to get busy with her work for the Lord.

For the next two years Mary worked hard at Use and Ikpe. She traveled between these two places, sometimes in a canoe, sometimes in the government boat, but mostly in her two-wheeled cart. There was still much to do. She was still fighting the juju worship, the sinful practice of eating people and the murdering of twins.

Eight years had gone by since Mary had left Akpap. A new church was being finished and the missionaries who now worked there invited Mary to attend the dedication service. Mary wanted to see the dear friends she had loved for years. She decided to go and take her adopted children with her.

From all over Okoyong the people had come to see their Ma, their White Queen. Ma Eme, the missionary's old friend, was there. When they met tears filled their eyes, they were so happy to see one another again. But Mary was sad, too, because Ma Eme had never openly accepted Christianity. Speaking of Ma Eme, Mary said, "My dear and old friend and almost sister, she made the saving of life so often possible in the early days. It is sad that she would not come out for Christ. She could have been the honored leader of God's work. Hers is a foolish choice. And yet God cannot forget all she was to me and how she helped me in those dark and bloody days."

Hundreds of people crowded into the new church at Akpap. Mary remembered the wild parties and drunken fights of the first days of her work among the people. How they were changed! How God had changed them through His Gospel! It was wonderful! Mary thanked God for His wonderful blessings.

Shortly after her trip to Akpap, Mary was honored by the king of Great Britain. She was chosen by him to be a member of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. This was an honor given only to English Christians who had done great things for God. The government people of Calabar decided that they must have a public celebration of this great honor. They sent the government boat for Mary. The little old missionary, now nearly sixty-five, was brought to Duke Town. Here a great crowd filled the biggest hall in town.

The governor made a speech and pinned the cross on Mary's left shoulder. During the speech Mary sat with her head in her hands. When it came time for her to speak, she found it hard to talk. Turning to the boys and girls who were in the hall she said, "Be faithful to the government. Be Christians. Be friends of the mission and be followers of Jesus."

Later she wrote to her friends in Scotland:

Don't think there is any change in me because I received this honor. I am Mary Slessor, nothing more and none other than the unworthy, unprofitable but most willing servant of the King of kings.

The only change the honor made in Mary was that she worked harder than ever. A government road was opened to Odoro Ikpe. Mary at once started a mission there and reached out into the small jungle settlements. There she talked with the chiefs and the natives. At last she won their consent to build schools and churches. They gave her the land to do this. Now she was beginning all over in a new territory. She had the same hard work, the same troubles, the same heathen customs to fight. But Mary was glad to do it. She thanked God for the chance to bring the Gospel to people who had never heard about it.

Mary saw to it that a house was built and then began teaching in the school, holding services, settling quarrels, winning souls for Jesus. In August, 1914, rumors reached her that Europe was rushing into war. This made her feel sick. She knew that this war would not only bring suffering, horror, and death to many of her dear friends, but it would also hinder the work in Calabar.

Several months went by. The mail came. Mary opened the newspaper. There she read the headlines: Russia declares war! France declares war! England declares war! Mary fainted. The trouble and excitement were too much for her. For two weeks more she carried on her work but it was too much for her. She became weaker and weaker. On Sunday, January 10, 1915, she held her usual church service. After the church meeting she fainted. Dr. Robertson arrived from the Slessor Hospital at Itu. He was able to bring her to, but on January 12 she found it almost impossible to talk. Her last words were a prayer in the African language called Efik.

"O Abasi, sana mi yok," said Mary. "O God, release me!"

Janie, the first twin Mary had saved, was now a beautiful black woman. She and other children Mary had saved and adopted were watching beside Mary's bed through the night. A rooster crowed.

"Day must be dawning," said one of the girls.

Day was dawning for Mary, God's eternal day. She slipped away from the earth to be with her Saviour in Heaven.

"Our Mother is dead, and we shall be slaves now that our Mother is dead," cried the natives. The news that the white Ma was dead spread rapidly. Natives came from all over the country to see the woman they loved.

Mary's body was taken to Itu where services were held. Then it was taken to Duke Town. Here another service was held. Then the coffin was carried to the beautiful cemetery on Mission Hill. From this place could be seen a large part of the city where Mary had begun her faithful missionary work in Africa. Around her grave the grateful natives gathered and wept for her who had wept and prayed over them.

"Do not cry, do not cry," said old Ma Fuller, Mary's native friend through the years. "Praise God for His blessings. Ma was a great blessing."

First the Africans called her "the white Ma who lives alone." Then they called her "the Ma who loves babies." But lastly they called her "#eka kpukpru owo#," "everybody's Mother."

THE END

Books on Women Missionaries

* * * * *

WHITE QUEEN OF THE CANNIBALS

The Story of Mary Slessor
By A.J. Bueltmann

When Mary was young, she heard her mother read about the dangers and rewards of missionary work in Calabar, Africa. This challenged Mary Slessor's young heart and she determined to serve her Lord there. White Queen of the Cannibals records her courage as a missionary to the worst of pagans. The story is simply told that it might inspire children to Christian service.

NOT ALONE By Eunice V. Pike

Many hundreds of languages in the world today have never been reduced to writing. Uncounted thousands of people cannot read God's Word. The work of Wycliffe Bible Translators is to master the language of a tribe, reduce it to writing, and then teach the people to read the Scriptures—in their own tongue. Eunice Pike recounts her years spent with the Mazatec Indians in Mexico, giving them God's Word.

CLIMBING By Rosalind Goforth

After returning home from many years of missionary service in China, Rosalind Goforth reflects on those incidents that most affected her life for Christ. Written to display the mercy of the Lord and "to help others face life's hard problems," the author recalls her experiences from childhood to retirement—a life of constant climbing.

*****

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