The damp floor of our new church, and the day-school being taught in it, soon destroyed the fine set of mats prepared by the women for the opening services. They had rotted away and were soon in shreds. As the women could not be expected to provide new mats every few months, or the congregation to buy them, something had to be done, and I was greatly exercised in mind to know what to do to get a dry floor. I could not lay down a wooden floor, that would have cost £100. As I had no £100, and was weary of begging, I had to set my wits to work to find out how a dry floor could be secured. After some time I came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to macadamize it. I went down to the school next morning, to enlist the services of the children. I said to them: ‘I want you to help me to floor the church.’ They looked at me and then at each other, not seeming to understand what I meant, and, perhaps, suspecting that I had gone slightly wrong in my head. I said: ‘We white men have a proverb which says: ‘Foolish people and children should never see half-finished work.’ You just do as I tell you, and you will find that it will be all right in the end. Every morning as you come to school, bring a stone in each hand, about the size of your fist, and fling them down at the church door.’ They did so for several months, and I went down one morning, and we flung all they had brought into one corner of the church; but they only filled a space of about twelve feet square and a foot deep. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘children, it will evidently take us a very long time to floor the church at this rate; suppose we set to work and finish it off at once.’ ‘Just as you please, sir,’ they said. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you shall have a holiday to-day; but come at the usual hour to-morrow morning.’ They were all there at 8 o’clock next morning, and so was I, and after the hymn, reading of the Scriptures, and prayer, we started off to gather stones till 12 o’clock, and we kept at that, all over the moor from 8.30 till 12 o’clock for five days a week for over a fortnight. We filled the floor of the church, a space of 60 feet by 40. I got the women folks to bring me sand from the banks of the stream, and spread a few inches of sand over the stones. What was then wanted was a roller, but there was no such thing to be had. ‘Take what you have and you’ll never want’ came in useful again. I had no roller, but I had 260 children with a couple of feet each, and I set them scampering and dancing all over that floor, until they had tramped it as hard as any roller could have made it. I then had three inches of mud spread above the sand, and the whole floor washed with odorous waters, which, repeated at intervals, kept the floor unbroken, and gave freedom from the insect pest of Malagasy churches, and thus we got a clean, dry, comfortable floor, which had not cost money, and all felt that they had done their share in the producing of it--a most important item.