Ten-year-old Fred Hope looked up at the men who looked down at him. He was very happy because he had just taken the pencil and paper which one of the men handed him, and written

Fred Hope$1.00

He lived on a farm near Flat Rock, Illinois, and many times he had seen his father sign his name to a subscription paper when the deacons had been collecting money for the church and had made up his mind that some day he would sign his own name. At last he had done so, and his eyes were shining.

"Now," said he, "I've got to find a way to make that dollar."

He took a hoe and some beans and went into the garden to begin to earn his dollar. He planted the beans and watched eagerly to see them grow. It was a bad year for beans in Illinois and there was no crop. But he did not give up. From beans he turned to rats. The rats had been eating his father's grain and Fred made a contract to rid the place of rats at five cents apiece. It happened there were more rats than beans in Flat Rock that year and no Indian chief ever counted with more pride his scalps of white men than Fred the notches which numbered the rats he had slain. Soon the dollar was paid, and his father's grain was safe.

The next money Fred made was to pay his way to college. When he had almost enough saved, his mother said:

"Father does not see how he can get along without you on the farm. He has had a great deal of trouble and lost a lot of money."

"Of course I'll stay, and I'll find a way to go to college later on," answered Fred.

When he was twenty-four years old he went to Maryville College in Tennessee. There he had to begin with the small boys in the preparatory department.

"You might just as well give up," said some of his friends. "You are so far behind you can never catch up."

But Fred only laughed. "I'll find a way. When I can't raise beans I always catch rats."

He worked as hard at his lessons as he had on the farm, and played as well as he worked. He was the best man on his football team, and when he graduated he was president of his class.

While he was at school he thought he would like to be a missionary, but he did not wish to be a preacher and he had never heard of a missionary who was not a preacher. At last he settled it this way:

"If God wants me to be a missionary and there is any way I can be a missionary without being a preacher then I'll be one."

A few years later as a steamer neared the west coast of Africa, Fred Hope jumped from one of the berths. He called to his wife to dress as fast as she could so they should not miss the first glimpse of the shore.

He had found a way; he was going to Elat on the west coast of Africa to take charge of the Frank James Industrial School. As he stood on the deck in the gray light of the early morning, he seemed to see John Ludwig Krapf and Robert Moffat and David Livingstone and all the men and women who had found a way to give their lives to Africa, and his heart was glad.

He could see two white dwelling houses surrounded by tall coconut-palms and other tropical plants, beyond the dashing surf at the Batanga landing. How anxious he was to reach them! The travelers were lowered to the small boat in a "Mammy chair," a seat swung by ropes from the deck of the steamer. Then the sturdy black men pulled for the shore, their wet backs gleaming in the sunlight.

A boy who had come from Elat to meet them was waiting with two bicycles. Mr. Hope had never been on a bicycle, so he practised riding round and round, to the amusement of all the crowd. Then he and Mrs. Hope started on their long journey of one hundred and ten miles in the narrow path through the African jungle.

On either side of them giant trees reached upward for many, many feet before spreading out branches to the sunlight above. Underneath the trees there was no sunshine, only the gloom of dense foliage. It made them feel as though they were in a great cathedral,—the quiet, the great pillars of the trees, and the dim light.

As they rode on through the villages and the bush, people crowded round them curiously. The black men could not speak the white man's words or make the white man understand their words. They pointed to Mr. Hope's head.

"They want you to take off your hat so they can see your straight hair," said the boy.

Mr. Hope took off his hat. They looked at his straight hair very solemnly. Then they pointed to Mrs. Hope's head.

"They want to see the hair that is like long ropes," said the boy. Mrs. Hope took off her hat.

They moved their hands to their heads and then far out until she understood that they wanted her to take out the hairpins and stretch her hair as far as it would reach "like long ropes."

They gazed with wonder at its length and softness. Then one of them opened his mouth and pointed first to his teeth and then to Mr. Hope's mouth. Soon every black man was doing the same thing.

"They want to see your brass teeth," the boy explained. Mr. Hope opened his mouth, while the people who had never heard of a dentist gazed with much respect at the gold fillings.

"How do the people all along the way know we are coming?" asked Mr. Hope. "There are no telegraph wires or telephones."

"By the drums," answered the boy. "Every village has its drums. They are hollowed out of logs so the ends make curious sounds that speak to those who listen. When you pass through a village the men who beat the drums call to the next village, 'Strange white man is here.' All important men have drum names. Perhaps you will do something so brave they will give you a drum name some day."

When they reached Elat, Mr. Hope began to find the work God had provided for a man who was not a preacher. The missionaries who had been in Africa said that the boys and men who went home after being in the mission schools had nothing to do. There were no stores for them to run, no factories or shops in which they could work, and no one had ever taught them how to farm.

Native African "Wireless Station"

Every village on the West Coast has its drum by which messages are sent from village to village.There were not even any decent houses. They had to live in little huts made out of the bark of trees, with a dirt floor, no windows, and only one little door, so low that they had almost to crawl in. Their houses had only one room, and in that room all the family cooked and ate and slept. The chickens stayed in a little room built at the side of the house. There was no way for them to get in except through the same door that led through the house. Often they stopped to take a peck at the food the women were grinding between heavy flat stones.

The houses were very dirty. The women had no time to keep their houses clean; they had to dig and hoe the ground and harvest the crops and look after their children and cook the meals.

Meanwhile the men sat round the huts and smoked and drank and palavered. To "palaver" means to talk and talk and then talk some more. Sometimes they went hunting and sometimes they fought men of other tribes. If they had known how to work or if it had been the custom for them to work, they would not have been so good-for-nothing.

Mr. Hope decided that one of the best deeds one could do for Africa would be to teach the men and boys how to work, to build decent houses and churches and towns, to make furniture and clothes, and to use the wonderful natural gifts God has given to Africa.

The Frank James Industrial School had been started to do all of these things and half a dozen boys were there to welcome the new superintendent. The school building was a little bark shack much like a native hut. From an industrial school at Old Calabar Mr. Hope secured a tailor and a carpenter. He found an old hand sewing machine which someone had almost worn out in America and then put into a missionary box for Africa. Then the boys were ready to sew.

The first order they took was for clothes for a party of men who came many miles carrying burdens. In the interior of Africa there are no freight or express lines and everything is carried on the heads or backs of men. These bearers had come one hundred and twenty-five miles carrying sixty-five pounds each. They received one cent a mile for their loads. When they got their money, Mr. Hope said, "it burned their pockets, or would have burned them if they had had any pockets." That was just what they wanted—some pockets like the white men. They wore only pieces of bark cloth tied around their waists.They wanted to spend their money at once and asked how much they could buy for $1.25. Mr. Hope told them that would not buy a whole suit of clothes, so they decided that each of them would get a coat, since a coat had more pockets than trousers. The boys in the tailoring school took their measure for their first order for "clothes made while you wait."

They waited for a whole week and then went home each wearing a khaki coat and as happy as if he had a full outfit. Since that day the tailoring class has never caught up with its orders. The men and boys have made clothes for themselves, for the missionaries and their wives and children, and for people in the country round about. They have even made uniforms for army officials. They can do all this work because now they have large, plank buildings and machinery which includes fifteen sewing machines.

But tailoring would not keep everyone busy, and other things besides clothes were needful, so Mr. Hope put some of the boys to work in a carpentry class. Logs of beautiful wood were brought from the wonderful forests. There were no great trucks in Elat, so a team of fifteen or twenty men was made up to haul the logs to the saw mill and from there they were taken to the carpenter shop.

At first all the lumber was sawed by hand, and it took two men all day to saw out half a dozen planks. Then Mr. Hope wrote to America for an engine. When the big engine landed at Batanga the people were very much excited.

"Let us go with you to bring it to Elat," said several of the men.

"How will we be able to pull such a big engine that weighs so much?" asked one.

"You are an ignorant man," answered another. "Do you not know the strange thing that white men say of this engine?"

"What is it that they say?"

"They say that men need not pull this engine along the road, but that if men will make fire in it and put water over the fire the engine will walk by itself along the road."

When they reached Batanga they helped to put the water in the boiler and make the fire and then they saw the engine "walk by itself."

They had traveled about thirty-five miles along the wide, new road, and Mr. Hope was thinking how wonderful it would be to have the big engine at the saw mill, when there was a crash, and the bridge over the muddy stream they were crossing went down. The engine turned over and dropped twenty feet into the creek below.

Mr. Hope and his friend, who were riding on the engine, went down with it and were thrown to one side. The black men thought they were killed, for heavy timbers had fallen all around them, but they soon crawled out alive and stood looking at their engine lying upside down in the mud of the little creek.

The black men said the engine could never be raised from the creek. Mr. Hope only smiled, and went to work. In a week the engine was standing on the road ready to walk by itself again.

Then a message came from the governor saying the engine would not be allowed to walk through his country. But even this did not discourage Mr. Hope. He sent back to Elat for one hundred men. They came and hitched themselves to the engine like horses and pulled it all the long way to Elat, where from that time it sawed the wood as fast as it was needed. It was a year from the time they started until they pulled the engine into Elat.

At first the boys made very simple furniture, but soon they advanced to dining-room extension tables, couches, davenports, and bookcases. Morris chairs were their especial delight, and they have invented ingenious folding-chairs.

Mr. Hope looked at some American wicker and willow furniture and said, "We ought to beat that in Africa, because we have such wonderful bush-rope in the jungles."

At the Frank James Industrial School, Elat, Africa

The boys gathered rattan vines, and Fred Hope showed them how to make attractive bush-rope furniture.So the boys began to gather rattan vines of different sizes and make it into bush-rope furniture which was so beautiful that when foreign officers visited Africa and saw it, they insisted on taking samples home with them.

Next the boys turned their attention to building houses. They practised on houses for themselves; then they built houses for the missionaries. They decorated Mr. Hope's house with beautiful mahogany panels made from the trees that grew right at their door.

When, after a while, the government needed large warehouses the boys from Elat were able to build them.

Their greatest triumph was the Elat church. This is not a little chapel as one might expect in a mission; it is a church that seats four thousand people. Not only did they build the church, but they made all the furniture for it, and the many thousands of mats of dried grass with which the roof was covered. Next they went around the country building other Christian churches as they were needed.

They learned to make small articles as well as large. From the tusks of the elephants, which were not in cages at the Zoo, but at home in the forests all about, they made ivory chessmen.

Of course, Mr. Hope cannot keep forever the many boys and men who come to the school. Most of them must go back to their own homes. He wanted them to know how to farm when they went back, so he laid out a little farm for them to practise on at the schools, and here they learn the best methods of planting and cultivating. They have tried to find new plants which might grow in Africa. Our own American Agricultural Bureau became interested in exchanging plants and seeds, and before long we will see African vegetables in America and American vegetables in Africa.

Some boys are taught to become blacksmiths and in their shop they do everything from putting a new blade into a pocket-knife to rebuilding an automobile.

"An automobile!" you say. "Where did they find it?" It happened in a curious fashion. Elat was in German territory and when the Great War began and the Germans were driven away, they did not wish to leave behind anything that would be of help to the French army, so they piled up all their bicycles, motor cycles, automobiles, and trucks and wrecked them with sledges and blew them up with dynamite. To be sure that nothing was left they set fire to the wreck. The French officers came along and looked at the pile of scrap iron and said, "Junk! Nothing worth taking with us," and gave it to the mission. When Fred Hope saw it, his eyes shone just as if they had taken him into a big supply store and said, "Help yourself." Some people might have shrugged their shoulders in despair, but Mr. Hope and his assistant, Mr. Cozzens, set the boys at the school to work on the junk heap, and out of it they made an automobile. This model is not to be bought in the American market, but it has a number of good points all its own. Then they made an auto-truck. What was left was made into a steam engine which runs the shaft that in turn runs a planer, a boring machine, a shingle mill, a grinder, and a large lathe.

During the war there was no oil to be had for the machinery, but Mr. Hope did not stop all the wheels and cable to America that he would have to close the school.

"See all these beans growing around us," he said to his boys. "They are almost like the castor beans we have in America, and Americans make oil out of the castor bean. Bring me a jack from the carpenter shop." The boys ran to get the jack. "Now, turn it upside down and make a press out of it."

They mashed the beans until a thick oil ran out. Then Mr. Hope bought peanuts, not ten cents worth in a paper sack from the corner store, but tons from the farms where they grew. The boys mashed them until barrelfuls of oil were stored away. It was a better grade and much cheaper than the oil they bought from Europe. Today two hydraulic presses make the manufacture of oil easy.

"What shall we do now?" asked a boy one day. "There are no more of the American brooms."

"Why not make brooms here in our own school?" said Mr. Hope.

They planted broom-corn seed and it grew so well that now broom-making is one of the trades taught at Elat.

During the war there was no soap to be had. Some people said, "How dreadful!" but Mr. Hope said, "What good luck! We shall have to find a way to make our own soap."

He sent to America for lye, and the school has added soap-making to its other work.

One day the boys asked what they should do with the shavings in the carpenter shop.

"Burn them," said Mr. Hope. "Burn all of them."

The foolish boys set fire to them on the dirt floor of the shop. They were piled up so high that the roof mats caught fire and in a few moments there was nothing left of the carpentry shop but a pile of ashes and a few blackened tools.

But almost before the ashes were cold, Mr. Hope started the remorseful boys to building another shop, and in less than a week they were back at work.

Many of the young men who came to the school were married, and Mr. Hope decided that he would build a town where each man who attended school could live in his own home. His town now has houses on each side of the street and more than one hundred families live there. In the afternoons, Mrs. Hope has classes for the girls and women. She teaches them to cook and to sew, to read and to write, and to take care of their children.

After the boys and men and their wives have finished their training in the schools, they go back to their own villages. Often they build themselves a home. The chief is sure to be interested in a man who has a house better than his own, so the mission boys become men of importance.

Hundreds of boys have been turned away from the school because they could not be accommodated. Only the strongest Christian boys are chosen. These boys come from all parts of the mission and are recommended for admission by the missionaries who know them.