It can readily be inferred that the young are not overburdened in the way of education. Some training there must be—some elementary inculcation of modesty and manners, to judge by results: but the deference shown to very small children—especially boys; the girls begin to make themselves useful at an early age, and are duly kept in their places—is somewhat ludicrous, and one would expect it to be disastrous, only that the effects do not seem to answer such expectation. When a six-foot Ntumbi native informed me that his son (a precocious youth of perhaps eight, and extremely minute for that age) had failed to attend school because he had gone ‘to a beer-drinking at So-and-So’s,’ and I expressed some not unnatural surprise, not unmingled with reprobation, the father replied, ‘If he has made up his mind to go, who can hinder him?’ ‘_Akana mwini_—his lordship refuses,’ was the answer given by the female relatives of another youthful truant to the teacher of the Blantyre mission-school. I was still new to the country when I went out for a walk at Blantyre with one Limwichi—aged, I suppose, ten, and with something of a reputation for _chipongwe_ (the best translation is ‘cheek’)—to carry my butterfly-net. We met a big Yao, meditatively walking along and eating a piece of _chinangwa_ (cassava root) as he went. Whether Limwichi was previously acquainted with this gentleman or not, I don’t know; but he walked coolly up to him and asked (with what degree of politeness my proficiency in the language did not enable me to judge) for a share in this delicacy. I half expected to see Limwichi’s ears boxed, instead of which the man broke off a piece of his _chinangwa_ and handed it to him. I fear he did not say ‘Thank you.’ (Some hold that natives never do—perhaps not understanding that ‘_Chabwino_’—‘It is good’ conveys the same thing.) Limwichi, I am sorry to say, had been to school—not long enough, let us say, to have his manners (though these were not precisely ferocious) softened by learning; but nothing could be gentler and prettier than the ways of the unschooled Ntumbi village children who, having got over their first shyness at the unwonted white faces which made babies shriek and dogs bark from end to end of the kraals, followed one along the narrow native paths—somewhat embarrassing in their desire to walk alongside, where the nature of the ground made it difficult, and to hold one’s hands, half a dozen at once—but not really forward or troublesome. I never, with fair opportunities to have come across that sort of thing if it had been at all common, saw a child struck or otherwise ill-treated. On the whole, I think, if native parents fail in their duty, it is through being too easy-going.