A black infant is not clothed like a white one. If his mother is very proud of him he will have a string of beads round his neck or waist. Round his fat little wrist or neck you will often see tied on by string a small medicine charm, put there by his fond mother to protect him against disease or evil influence. When the babies are big enough to toddle they begin to look out for themselves, and when they have fairly found their legs they go everywhere and do almost anything they like so long as they do not give trouble. A little boy’s first article of clothing may be made of different coloured beads carefully woven into a square patch, which he wears hanging down before him from a string of beads encircling his waist. Or it may perhaps be only the skin of a small animal worn in the same way as the square of beads. He may, however, begin with a cloth from the beginning. If so his mother provides him with a yard of calico, rolls it round him, and sends him out into the world as proud as a white boy with his first pair of trousers. He gets no special food because he is a child. He eats whatever is going and whatever he can lay his hands upon. Thus he grows up not unlike a little animal. There is not much trouble taken with him. If he lives, he lives; and if he dies--well, he is buried. No fond lips have bent over him and kissed him asleep, for kissing is not known to his people. Nor has he learned to lisp the name of Jesus at his mother’s knee. It is not that his mother does not love him, for she does in her own peculiar way. But all are shrouded in ignorance, father, mother and children, all held in the grip of dark superstitions from which nothing but the light of the Gospel of Love can free them. CHAPTER VI AN AFRICAN VILLAGE Shall we go round the village now? Well come away and we’ll have a walk through it. But as we are strangers and white, I must warn you that many pairs of curious eyes will be watching us when we know not, and all we do and say will be the talk of the village for a long time to come. It is not every day that the villagers get such a good look at a white person, and they will take advantage of their chance to-day. Babies on backs will cry if we come near them, and little mites that can run will disappear behind their mothers and peep out at us, feeling safe but very much afraid. In fact, many of the women frighten their naughty children by telling them that if they do not behave better they will send them to the white people, who will eat them. Consequently when a white man comes along the children often scatter in terror as from a wild beast. And would not white children do just the same from a black man if they were told that he might eat them.