A little abashed at the manner in which we had treated his offer, the preacher sent away the two young ladies to the back of his premises, and, beginning to have a faint idea that he had somehow not risen in our estimation, he endeavoured to retrieve his lost ground by falling back upon his more legitimate occupation, and asked that we should delay our departure in order that he might preach a sermon to the men. The hypocrisy of this proposition, coming as it did immediately after the other, was more than we could stand, and, expressing our thoughts in unequivocal terms, we paid him what we owed, went out, and got the men together ready to march off. The village pastor, however, was not going to be done out of an opportunity of showing forth before his unsophisticated flock, and, while we were preparing to start, delivered an exhortation in which “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” “soldiers of the Lord,” “smite with the edge of the sword,” and similar expressions, were jumbled together in a meaningless jargon; while when we moved off he strode alongside for some distance, open-mouthed, shouting in a discordant voice that highly-appropriate hymn called “Hold the Fort,” the work of those itinerant vendors of religion, Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Whenever I meet such creatures as this local preacher I am moved to anger and restrain myself only with difficulty. Little children in England stint themselves in the luxury of sweets by giving of their scarce pence to aid the “poor missionaries,” and people who can ill afford to be charitable contribute their mite to further the promulgation of Christianity among heathen negroes; while scoundrels like this preacher batten upon the subscriptions thus raised, live in the best house in the village, acquire authority and wealth, and lead a happy life of idleness and vice. The persons who draw up those highly-coloured Mission Reports for the benefit of the gullible British public have a great deal to answer for.