The missionary then volunteered to take a journey along the east and north-east coast, on behalf of the native missionary association of the ‘Union,’ to visit their stations and five evangelists. This journey, I believe, ultimately cost him his life; for he returned from it so filled with malarial poison that he was very ill for months--in fact, his life hung on a thread for weeks--and, although he recovered then, he was never again the same man, and he died some six years afterwards. His authority having been weakened by the opposition of the slave owners and other worthless members of the church, his long absence owing to his journey and subsequent illness, during which the church had been left very much to itself (which no church could then be without getting into an unsatisfactory state), were both causes of the condition in which we found it. It did not reach a satisfactory state until the old church was broken up and a new one formed. Once, while on a visit to the capital from Vònizòngo, I had expressed my astonishment that there were no Congregational Sabbath schools. I was at once told that such an idea showed plainly that I was a _country_ brother; for if I knew anything about work in the capital, I should know that Sunday schools could not be held there. I did not accept that statement as correct. A general Sabbath school for the children of the capital had been opened in the Friends’ high school-house about 1877, but what was _one_ in a city of 80,000 inhabitants? We had reached Antanànarìvo on our return from our first furlough in August, 1882, and on the first Sabbath of October I appealed to the church to help me to begin and carry on a Congregational Sabbath school, and asked for volunteer teachers from among the young men and women. Thirty-six volunteered, some from very mixed motives and mistaken ideas. For a year afterwards some of them asked me when I intended paying them for their teaching. I replied that I would pay them as soon as ever they were out of debt to the Almighty for food and raiment, health, strength, Gospel privileges, redemption, and freedom to worship Him. I heard no more about remuneration for Sabbath-school teaching. We gathered a Sabbath school of two hundred which, although the numbers were allowed to fall while we were away on our second furlough in 1890–2, has kept up well ever since, and done much good work. The old deacons, however, regarded it as a new-fangled idea of mine and of the young folks, and would have nothing to do with it. They told me that my predecessors had had no such notions, and asked why I could not be content to follow in their footsteps. I pointed out that the time might not have been ripe for Sabbath schools in their days, and asked them what they would think of a mother who threw her children into the street instead of nursing them. But it was of no use; they were so firmly opposed to the introduction of Sabbath schools that they would hear nothing in their favour.