In America a child can be kept out of the way of the worst temptations until he has reached years of discretion, but such separation is impossible in Africa. This boy, when he was a little child, was taught to drink rum; his mother died a hopeless victim of it; and by the time he was a young man the appetite for it was insatiable and complete master of him. The finer feelings which characterized him seemed to make him all the more the victim of this inordinate desire. He fought it as he might have fought a python of his native jungles, but in vain. On one occasion, in the presence of Mr. Marling, he pledged himself with the solemnity of an oath never to taste it again. A few days afterwards he was walking down the street of an interior town when most unexpectedly he met a boy with a bottle of rum. He sprang at the boy, snatched the bottle from him and drank the contents. Other efforts ended similarly. He afterwards made such promises to me, weeping and fairly prostrated with shame and humiliation; yet he soon fell again. He became at length quite hopeless, and it was necessary to dismiss him from all service in the mission. He got several good positions, but lost them immediately. When I last saw him he was a moral wreck and almost an outcast even in Africa, where there are no outcasts. Augustus has since died; one more victim of poisoned rum. _He is full of compassion and plenteous in mercy._ And, knowing Augustus as I knew him, I dare to hope that he has again at last heard the long-lost chord, and the sound of the great _Amen_. The native is constitutionally incapable of being a moderate drinker. And, besides, drunkenness is not disgraceful; they have not the spirit that revolts from it. I have personally seen little children intoxicated. I have seen them intoxicated in the schoolroom. I have known of parents getting their own children to drink to intoxication for their amusement. It is doubtful whether there is another tribe in all West Africa so besotted with alcoholism as the Mpongwe. Physicians agree that it is one of the chief causes of their increasing sterility.