One day the schoolboys killed a very young one twelve feet long, and immediately returned to search for the parents; for they said that a mere baby python like this would not yet have left its parents’ care to shift for itself. The next day after this several of the smaller boys were taken sick and I was called to the dormitory to see them. My immediate diagnosis was _python_, and I found that I was right. But none of the boys who had been in the school for more than one term joined in the feast; and some of them would no more have eaten it than I would. The regular food of the boys was cassava and dried fish. Plantains were sometimes substituted for cassava. If we were out of fish I gave them sardines—one sardine to each boy as his allowance of meat for a whole day; I believe that no devout contributor to missions will charge me with extravagance. If I had neither fish nor sardines I gave them coconuts. The meat of a very ripe coconut is full of a strong oil and the natives like it. A boy’s food costs less than a cent a meal. The food for an entire day was given out at noon. They cooked their fish all together in a large kettle. During the entire year there was never a quarrel over the division of their food. I provided knives and forks and a beautiful service of tin plates and spoons, all of which was new to them as well as eating off a table—in this instance a broad shelf around the outside of the house covered by the projecting eaves. The only plates that they had ever known were leaves; so they called the plates _leaves_, and had no other name for them. But I was rather puzzled the first time a boy came and asked me for a “leaf”—“a white man’s leaf.” The schoolhouse was an old discarded residence, which had been used by native ministers and others connected with the mission. It had been good in its day, and it had a board floor; but it was now in an advanced stage of decay. It was divided into two rooms. One day I was in the smaller room teaching a class of fifteen little boys seated on three long benches when suddenly the floor gave way and the whole class fell through. White ants were probably responsible for the collapse. The floor was elevated on posts and the ground was several feet below. One side of the room went down before the other, declining the benches so that the boys slid to the lower end and fell off all in a heap. They got up after a while and having crawled out they went around the schoolhouse and marched in at the front door. Nduna, who was teaching a class, being surprised at their entrance, said: “I thought you boys were in this other room.” Esona, the wittiest boy in the school, replied: “We thought so too but we were mistaken.” [Illustration: SCHOOLHOUSE AND DORMITORY AT GABOON. ]