“Well, I’ve brought two eggs,” says the Fang; “good eggs—both of them laid this morning—and I want some of that medicine.” I leave the class and first spend considerable time testing the eggs. One of them is probably the oldest egg in the world. I complain to the man, and he tells me that he took his wife’s word for its being laid that morning; but that he might have known better, for she is the worst liar that ever lived, and he—a lover of truth—is going to send her home to her father and demand the dowry which he paid for her. And if it be refused war will be declared between that town and his own. I advise him that the matter of the egg is hardly worth going to war over. The other egg is middling good; and I give him the medicine. Then I resume the theological lecture. The most noticeable feature of this _simple life_ is its bewildering complexity. There is no mental perspective. The clamour of the small but immediate interest constantly claims the attention, as a mote may bolt a landscape. Emerson’s observation, that Isaac Newton was as great while engaged in tying his shoe-string as in computing the magnitude of the fixed stars, was comforting when much of my time was occupied in tying shoe-strings. Yet, after all, such a life is exactly as great, or as petty, as a man himself makes it. The shoe-string is the equivalent of a cup of cold water. And it is a fact that these small matters afford the very best kind of opportunity for personal contact and personal influence with the native.