Although such mothers are not uncommon, yet as a rule when it was settled that the boy was coming to school his mother would prepare him some little delicacy to eat on the way; and occasionally, though seldom, I have been touched by evidences of real tenderness. In a certain far-away bush-town, more than one hundred miles in the interior, I approached an old woman to plead her consent for her boy who was eager to come with me. The Fang word for _no_ is _koko_ (kaw-kaw). As soon as I had spoken she began shaking her head, in regular time with her words, and repeating in a continuous monotone: “Ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko,” on and on, like an agitated crow, all the time I was talking, and seeming not to stop for breath. I talked loud however, and she heard. I told her how much the other boys who belong to that town would in future surpass her boy, until at length I saw that her judgment was convinced and was gaining a slow victory over her feelings. She was still shaking her head, and she continued the ceaseless “Ko-ko-ko-ko”; but big tears were rolling down her cheeks, for she knew that she was going to yield. She was gradually lowering her voice, while I went on to say that I would take good care of her boy and that I could teach him many things that she did not know. By this time, though she was still shaking her head very slowly, her voice had died out. I gave the woman a big piece of laundry soap—four inches perhaps. [Illustration: EKANG. A little scholar. ] [Illustration: DISPENSARY—THE DAILY CLINIC. At the extreme end, on the spectator’s left, Mendam (see pp. 191, 198) is the boy who is kneeling, and has his hands on another boy’s shoulders. ] In one town a father whose boy had been in my school refused to let him come the second time, giving as his reason that I was teaching him not to kill people, while he wished him to kill. The father had heard him, after he had been in my school, teaching the people of the town a new commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” I tried my best to get the boy back again in the school in spite of his father; but I did not succeed. I wonder how many he has killed by this time! In a certain town at the head of one of the smaller rivers of the lower Gaboon there was one of my boys, named Ekang, a little fellow whom I regarded as the brightest boy in school; at least he led them all in French. I reached the town about ten o’clock at night. The people were all asleep; but Ekang soon heard my voice in the street and came quickly. He approached making amusing and mysterious signs to me, enjoining silence, which he explained when he came up by whispering: “She’s asleep.”