I usually held a service in the town. Then I asked the people for boys for my school, explaining the purpose of the school. The first reply was always a loud general consent—which did not deceive me; for I knew that it was only general and did not apply to any particular boy. As soon as a boy jumps up and says, “I want to go,” immediately several fathers and a score of mothers order him to sit down; another boy expresses his desire to come, and another score of parents protest. Then the war is on; and during its progress I usually receive a goodly share of cursing and abuse. With some I argue, with some I plead; sometimes I flatter, sometimes I scold—anything to get the boy. Besides diplomacy, a present of a piece of laundry soap was a necessity. I carried the yellowest kind of it, in long bars which I cut off by the inch. I would not take any boy, whom I had not had before, without his parents’ consent. And if I failed to obtain their consent, however unreasonable they might be, I declined to take the boy, though I often left him crying on the bank, or sometimes fighting a whole mob of his numerous relations single-handed. But if the boy had been in my school before and I had expended months of labour upon him the question was quite different. I then felt that I had a claim upon him, and I would take him if I possibly could, even in spite of his parents. In one town I met a fine boy, Ndong Nzenye, a tiny and handsome child, who had already been in my school. Of course he wished to return, and I was delighted that there seemed to be no parental objections. But at the last moment the inevitable mother appeared, and on general principles vetoed his coming. When she saw that she was unable to prevail she flew at him to give him a parting blow. He ran the length of the street—the woman following at his heels—and back again, and towards me for protection. I also ran towards him; but she was gaining on him, and just before we met she struck him, on the back, a blow with her fist that hurt him badly, and with a cry he fell into my arms. She said: “Now you can go with your white father;” and she went into the house looking as if she thought she had done a good deed. He was leaving home for six months and that was his farewell. One naturally wonders whether there are any moral possibilities for a boy who comes of such stock and from such a home. Yet that boy, as I knew him for two years, in the school and out of it, was gentle, obedient and lovable; though if he had remained in that town he would have grown up a savage like his people.