I often found the whole town engaged in dancing, of which they are passionately fond. It is not only their chief amusement, but also serves for physical culture, and accounts for their well-developed forms and graceful carriage. A great dancer among them becomes widely known, and is as highly esteemed as a virtuoso among us. I was one day teaching the people in a town where there were four Christians, when my attention was arrested by a good-looking and singularly well-developed man coming towards us down the street. I had not seen in Africa nearly so fine a form. He was graceful as he walked, and much more so when he threw himself down on the ground. He seemed to me a very Apollo Belvidere in ebony. They told me that he was a famous dancer. He had applied himself with diligence and extraordinary perseverance to the practice of all the difficult movements of the native dance until he was the envy of the men of his tribe. It was probably his persistent application to this practice, and his constancy of purpose, that gave to his face an unusual expression of gravity and strength. I was reminded of the story told by Addison of a shepherd who used to divert himself by tossing up eggs and catching them again without breaking them; in which he became so skillful that he could keep up four at a time for several minutes together; and who, by his perseverance and application had contracted the utmost severity and gravity of countenance. “That same attention and perseverance,” says Addison, “had they been rightly applied, might have made him a greater mathematician than Archimedes.” My native friend, for such he became, remained after the service to talk with me. He had come from his town five miles through the bush on purpose to meet me. He said he had been in this town frequently, and had heard those four Christians telling the people about God and the salvation of Christ, and he desired to be a Christian. He afterwards put away an extra wife, and he also renounced his dancing, for their dances are associated with certain immoralities. We never know in what unlikely place the Shepherd will find His sheep. Our duty is to declare His Word in every place, and His sheep will hear His voice and follow Him.