The white man gets up out of the dust and the ashes, glares fiercely around and asks if anybody knows where his helmet is. Some time in the future, after an extended and distressing experience he may chance to observe exactly how the black man enters his small door. He neither halts nor hesitates; but throwing up one leg, he throws his head down at the same time, probably extending an arm in front of him, and thrusting both head and leg through together, he bolts into the house. Near the coast the houses are better. There are often several rooms in a house. They have doors that swing on hinges, and windows the same, but unglazed. They have grass mats upon the beds. But all this is the result of the imported civilization. The idle life of the Fang, especially in the interior, and his freedom from responsibility, seem to the impatient white man to have obliterated from his mind the idea of time. The more prosperous people near the coast have a passion for clocks, but it is because they like to hear them tick and strike. A Fang cannot conceive that he has wronged you if he comes several days late to keep an engagement. This unreliableness in everything where time is a factor is one of the chief trials of the white man in Africa. But he ought to regard the native’s viewpoint and consider how very irritating and really discouraging to the native must be the white man’s incessant hurry. “We are not in a hurry,” says the black man. “Why should you come to Africa to set us all hurrying? Has it made your own people so very happy that you want to share with us the blessing of haste?” The African is the most sociable man in the world. He could not easily be killed with work even the hardest: he is not much afraid of it. But isolate him, take him away from his people, and he could easily die of homesickness. He is strongly emotional and warmly affectionate by nature. He loves his children, and sometimes embraces them tenderly, but he never kisses them. The kiss is meaningless to the African. They have never seen any such thing except between white people. I am almost ashamed to tell their interpretation of it as some of them have seen it executed and have reported to their people; but I presume it will do no harm. They think that white people, in kissing, expectorate into each other’s mouths. The word by which they designate the kiss is a compound which means “to exchange saliva.”—No wonder it is not popular! When those at the coast begin the practice of this fine art, it is usually accompanied by a sound loud enough to start a team of horses.