"We endured for a long while, using a wretched infusion of native corn for coffee, but when our corn was done, we were fairly obliged to go to Kuruman for supplies. I can bear what other Europeans would consider hunger and thirst without any inconvenience, but when we arrived, to hear the old woman who had seen my wife depart about two years before, exclaiming before the door, 'Bless me! how lean she is! Has he starved her? Is there no food in the country to which she has been?' was more than I could well bear." From the first, Sechéle showed an intelligent interest in Livingstone's preaching. He became a great reader especially of the Bible, and lamented very bitterly that he had got involved in heathen customs, and now did not know what to do with his wives. At one time he expressed himself quite willing to convert all his people to Christianity by the litupa, _i.e._ whips of rhinoceros hide; but when he came to understand better, he lamented that while he could make his people do anything else he liked, he could not get one of them to believe. He began family worship, and Livingstone was surprised to hear how well he conducted prayer in his own simple and beautiful style. When he was baptized, after a profession of three years, he sent away his superfluous wives in a kindly and generous way; but all their connections became active and bitter enemies of the gospel, and the conversion of Sechéle, instead of increasing the congregation, reduced it so much that sometimes the chief and his family were almost the only persons present. A bell-man of a somewhat peculiar order was once employed to collect the people for service--a tall gaunt fellow. "Up he jumped on a sort of platform, and shouted at the top of his voice, 'Knock that woman down over there. Strike her, she is putting on her pot! Do you see that one hiding herself? Give her a good blow. There she is--see, see, knock her down!' All the women ran to the place of meeting in no time, for each thought herself meant. But, though a most efficient bell-man, we did not like to employ him."