“My views upon missionaries and their work, from the general point of view, stand recorded elsewhere. I have no intention of recapitulating them here. Let me rather dwell upon the personal standpoint, as exemplified in the festive little couple who are our neighbours at ---- six miles away. “Let us call them Saunders--since that is not their name, and quite sufficiently unlike it--Joseph Saunders and Jane his wife. “All missionaries in this country, whether Baptist, Presbyterian, Church of England, or White Fathers, are hard-working, whatever else they may be. Saunders himself is a man hung upon wires, each of which would seem charged with a full circuit of electricity. He and his wife and the sun rise together--a most energetic trio. Before breakfast he has conducted service, taught for an hour or two in the school, visited the workshops and checked the labourers about the station. During the rest of the day he is occupied with blacksmithery, joinery and the like--laid in slabs between other chunks of teaching. As likely as not in the evening he will go out after a buck, for Joseph Saunders is that _rara avis_ among missionaries, a keen hunter; and after dinner if there are people in the house he will play ping-pong till all is blue. Not the ordinary ping-pong, you may be sure; that does not afford sufficient outlet for his exuberant spirits. Kapembwa ping-pong has mysterious rules of its own, such as that the players must bound upon the table between the strokes, or lie flat on the floor between serving and receiving the return. It is a curious game. I can generally stay out two sets, after that Beryl (the author’s wife) and I sit on the sofa and watch Saunders and his wife play. “As for Mrs. Saunders, she is one of the nicest little women in Africa. Demure, placid, and the very antithesis of Joseph--an adorable touch of Lancashire in her soft drawling speech, and an utter freedom from affectation or pose of any kind--she is the ideal next-door neighbour in Central Africa. “Saunders sent over the _junga_ for Beryl, so that she was able to cover the six miles in comparative comfort, while I paddled furiously behind upon an antediluvian bicycle. For the benefit of the uninitiated I should perhaps explain that a _junga_ is anything which moves upon wheels. Originally it meant a bicycle, but in this particular instance it refers to a marvellous construction, balanced upon one wheel, which has been built by Saunders himself in the Kapembwa workshop out of some old packing cases and gas piping, and which has to my mind solved the question of locomotion in this country.”