When any of the French Protestant missionaries preached for me at A-kànga, he was always there to hear them, and seemed to enjoy their discourses very much. When he told me that he had never seen a Bible before I said I would be very pleased to make him a present of one if he would accept it. He said he would only be too delighted to get it. I gave one to him and also to his companion. I often asked him if he read his Bible, and he said he always read it at night, when he could find it; but he explained that he could not always find it, as his comrades, when off duty, took it, read it, and were deeply interested in it. He told me that they thought that we British missionaries could not be such bad men as the Jesuits said, or we would not give such good books to the ‘niggers’ to read. They thought, of course, that it was vain and foolish labour, as nothing could ever be made of the ‘niggers’! I afterwards gave my friend a copy of a small volume of Mr. Spurgeon’s sermons in French, and some other booklets; and I heard from him several times after he left the island. Some time after the war and annexation of the island, a consignment of Malagasy New Testaments was sent out by the British and Foreign Bible Society. They were being passed through the custom house, in the presence of the Society’s agent. The late Malagasy government had allowed all copies of the Bible into the island duty-free; but the French authorities demand duty on them. One of the French officers took four copies out of one of the boxes. The agent asked him why he did so, and he answered: ‘To have them translated to see that there is nothing in them against the French!’ In a sermon once I told of an old friend of mine in Scotland, who, I said, made clothes for Jesus Christ. One of my local preachers present was very much impressed by what I said, and he retold what he had heard, when preaching in one of the village churches in the neighbourhood of the capital. A shoemaker, a member of that church, was struck by what he heard, it seems, and said to himself: If that European tailor can do his work for Jesus Christ, why can’t I do mine for Him; if he can make his clothes for Him, why can’t I make my shoes for Him? and he determined he would. Some months afterwards he called on the local preacher and told him the following story. He said: ‘I have been a church member for some years, but it never struck me that my religion should have any bearing on my daily work. I thought if I went to church twice on the Sabbath, and to the Communion once a month, gave a little money to the collection, and read my Bible and prayed sometimes, that was all that was required of me. But that story you told of that European tailor has impressed me, and threw such a flood of light upon my duty as a Christian man, that I at once saw that I had been all wrong in the past, and that I ought to do all my work for Jesus Christ.