The appearance which this habit presented outside the church always recalled what Dickens said of this same habit in America—that the appearance outside the windows of a railway coach was as if some one inside were ripping open a feather tick. The men and women sit on different sides of the church and I believe that in their stage of civilization it is best that they should thus be separated, though sometimes it is attended with inconvenience. For instance, a father may have charge of a baby that wants its mother; and if so it may be passed from one to another across the entire church, as I have seen, dangling by one little arm, and with no covering but that which nature has provided in its black skin. The large majority are dressed and there is nothing grotesque or foolish in their costumes. Most of the men wear a white undershirt and a large square robe of cotton, usually of bright colours, bound around the waist and falling almost to the feet. This is the most becoming male dress in Africa; and the black man in his own climate always looks best in bright colours. A few of the men, in too great haste to be civilized, wear shirts and trousers, the trousers a manifest misfit and the shirt outside the trousers. This mode of wearing the shirt, however, I would not criticise; it is charmingly naive, and rather sensible when one becomes accustomed to it. The women wear a similar square robe of bright cotton, or better material, bound around immediately below the arms, leaving the shoulders bare, and falling to their feet. But among them are many, both men and women, who wear a smaller cloth, bound around the waist and falling to the knees, with nothing on the upper body. Individuals have different costumes but these are the types; and the types are so established that anything eccentric or much out of style would occasion a smile. People of the bush sometimes straggle into the service so absurdly dressed that the gravity of the entire congregation is upset. It was so one Sunday when the following incident occurred.