Our first Sabbath at Fìhàonana was one long to be remembered, for on that day I spoke for the first time to my own people. The small chapel was quite full, although there were few present except the regular congregation. They were all clean, tidy, and attentive, and the only thing I had to find fault with was that so many of them chewed tobacco, or rather sucked snuff, which they placed in their lower lip, holding it between the lip and the gum, and expectorated into spittoons, which were for the most part open tins or earthenware basins, or empty ‘Day and Martin’s’ blacking bottles! I had only once to ask them to desist from such a filthy and objectionable practice in the house of God, though I had the greatest difficulty in putting a stop to the same thing twelve years afterwards in the city congregation of Ambàtonakànga. We began a day-school at once, and my wife started a sewing-class. We had also a large Sabbath school class for young and old, for Bible reading on the Sabbath afternoons. My first schoolmaster was Rakòtovào, a fine, open-faced, manly fellow, who did splendid work in that school for some years, and then rendered still better service as an evangelist for many more. He and his two sons were carried off by some of his personal enemies, who accompanied the heathen mob which attacked Fìhàonana during the rising in 1897, and all three were shot--murdered in cold blood. Our station school began with thirty, but went on increasing until we had two hundred and sixty. I did my utmost to get a school started in connexion with every village congregation, or preaching station, for from the first we recognized that in the children lay the hope of the future. My success, however, was by no means what I had expected; very few, except church members, would send their children to school, and as most of these were old, and their children quite grown up, we had but poor schools indeed for some years.