The Malagasy were too polite to laugh at one, even when the grossest mistakes made by a young missionary in phrase, grammar, or pronunciation greatly tempted the risibility of the hearer. The Hovas were a very polite people; they would not pass you on a country road without asking your permission to do so. They received reproof gracefully, and I have been thanked for giving a man a very severe scolding. [Illustration: MALAGASY TYPES. A HOVA PRINCESS. A HOVA CHRISTIAN. A MINSTREL. MALAGASY POUNDING RICE.] Probably bad proof-reading was responsible for many mistakes in former editions of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. For example: in Gen. xviii. 4, instead of Abraham saying to the angels, ‘Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet,’ the father of the faithful was made to say, ‘Wait until I steal a little water,’ &c. The Bible records that the builders of the Tower of Babel said, the one to the other, ‘Go to, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly,’ but the word _boriky_ (Fr. _bourrique_), ‘ass,’ was used in the old editions of the Bible in mistake for _birìky_ (Eng. ‘brick’); and so they were made to say, ‘Go to, let us make asses, and burn them thoroughly!’ In the story of Samuel we are told that, while a lad, ‘His mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year’ (1 Sam. ii. 19). The Malagasy had no such garment, and hence no name for it. The name _ànabỳ_ (Fr. _un habit_) which was used for a coat, was the name for the English soldiers’ old coats or tunics with the short tails, two hundred of which were given by the British government annually for many years to Radàma I, along with the same number of old flint-locks, to clothe and arm his guards, in return for his agreeing to stop the slave trade. Samuel’s mother was therefore said to have made her son an _ànabỳ_, a coat with short tails, and taken it to him year by year. These were all slight blemishes, however, when compared with the glorious truths the Bible made known to the Malagasy people--truths that were in every sense of the word revelations, transforming their lives.