He spent the whole time of my visit in telling me of the wrongs done him by fellow officials, that had culminated in his dismissal from the government service. He shed some tears and I fancied that they made clean streaks down his face. He told me what a respectable life he had lived; and I declare that I should never have suspected it. But when he also claimed sobriety as one of his chief virtues, nothing but the odour of his breath kept me from becoming an anti-temperance fanatic on the spot. Several of the men who had informed against him had since died, and in this he saw the finger of God; for of course they would never have died if they had not been his enemies. He, the animated remains of M. de la R⸺, was still the centre and explanation of the government of the universe, and God was simply a convenient instrument of vengeance. To that extent he was quite religious. And I ought to add that he believed in forgiving his enemies—but only after they were dead. But I pitied him greatly, and stayed with him most of the day. When I left him I had not the least expectation that I would ever see him again. A year after this, by a strange turn of the wheel of fortune, this man was reinstated, and was appointed a _chef de poste_. He easily resumed his former dignity of manner and care of dress. But he lived only a few months to enjoy his recovered prestige. During those months, however, he was appointed to inspect the school at Angom and his enthusiastic report (for which I hope he may have been forgiven) was the expression of his gratitude for the visit I had made him when he was without position, without money and without friends. Thus the bread of a little kindness cast upon the waters returned after many days multiplied into loaves. And he was the man who, years before, had closed our splendid school at Benito, because, forsooth, the missionaries were not diligent enough in teaching the French language. I also learned from Remondo that at the close of his inspection of the school at Angom he gave each of the little boys and girls a present of some tobacco. When I opened the school at Baraka I found it very difficult to procure boys. There were many boys who desired to come, but their parents would not consent. At the beginning of the term I gathered the boys with the launch, _Dorothy_. The red-hot contentions between me and the fathers and mothers made this work of opening the school the most exhausting and trying of the whole year. Often I was constrained to regard the parental institution as an intolerable nuisance and the orphan estate as a consummation that the African child might devoutly wish for.