Such a sound had never been heard in that part of the world. It was
shriller than the monkey's chatter; it was more penetrating than the
roll of the war-drums. Men, women, children—everybody—ran for the
woods. Even the goats and the chickens fled. Daddy laughed and laughed,
and presently they began to venture back.
"How he live for (does he) holler?" asked one.
"He shoot off wif he mouf!"
"Daddy say he have biler. Where de biler?"
"Yonder de biler!" And half a dozen fingers pointed to the smoke-stack.
Daddy let the fire go down and went back to the mission porch. It was
almost noon, and the hot sun commanded all men with white skins to
get under cover. He sat down to tell his friends in America that the
engine was in place, and, as he wrote, he remembered his arrival at the
mission, its desolation, the sinking of his heart. His pen dropped from
his fingers.
One man had, after all, done a great deal.
Mr. Day had, after awhile, a new title, given to him by a college at
home. First he had been Dave, then David, then he had been the Reverend
Mr. Day, then "Daddy," and now he was "the Reverend Doctor Day."
Probably he liked "Daddy" best of all.
He had ceased entirely as he grew older to think about other people
caring for him; what he wished for was to care for other people. He had
had many to love, the dear wife who worked with him, and two babies
whom they could only keep for a little while. Then there was Leila, a
little daughter who was brought up in America. When she was nine years
old she went to Africa, but lived only a short time.
He had also hundreds, even thousands, of black boys and girls and men
and women, those who came to the mission as children and married there
and bought themselves little farms near by, and those who came and
stayed only a little while and then went back to the jungle. Of these,
some forgot all they had learned, except one thing, that here was a man
who had come from so far away that they could not measure the distance,
simply to do them good.
For twenty-three years Dr. Day worked on, almost without rest. Mrs. Day
came home to America, worn-out, but with high courage to the end of her
life. She would not let anyone say that she would not get well and
that she could not go back and work with Dr. Day.
"In Africa everything depends on how brave you are. I expect to go
back."
Dr. Day saw many of the missionaries who came to help him fall by his
side; he saw his first native helpers grow old and die, but he was as
brave as Mrs. Day.
"This is my work," he would say. "I need no rest. This is my place."
In 1896 he came home. It was December, and more than thirty years had
passed since that December day when he had started out in the bleak
morning leading his poor horses. He traveled on a fast steamer, but it
was clearly to be seen that before he reached the dock he would have
started on another journey. The friends who came to meet him found only
his tired body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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