That would be a calamity indeed. They soon agreed that their king ought also to be good; and that this was the principal thing, although they had not thought of it before. And again, I told them of the love and sacrifice of Christ. But do I really think that they heeded this Gospel? I think that as I left them talking together some probably laughed at the message,—in fact I heard them,—some doubted, and some perhaps pondered these things in their hearts, to whom they may afterwards have become the words of eternal life. One often must turn aside during the service to answer irrelevant remarks. I was once preaching in a town where the white man had only been seen a few times, and was still an object of as much curiosity as would be an inhabitant of Mars, if he should make his advent among us, when a woman in the audience tried to attract my attention by repeating, “I say, white man! I say! I say!” At last I asked her what she wanted. She said: “I want to ask you a question.” I told her to wait until I had finished talking. But she could not wait, and she kept on interrupting me, until at length I said: “What is your question?” She said: “I want to know if your feet are as white as your hands and face?” O shade of Saint Paul, who commanded that women keep silence in the churches, and if they wanted to know anything to ask their husbands at home, how well I now understand that injunction! I answered: “Yes, my feet are as white as my hands and face,” and I tried to proceed with the sermon. I had on black socks, and it seems that some of the women, observing them, declared that the white man was not all white; that only his hands and face were white, and that the rest of him was as black as themselves. My answer, therefore, did not satisfy them all. Some said, “You lie, white man. We have eyes; you lie.” I was well used to this inartistic form of contradiction, and I did not object. They kept on disputing about the socks. But again the same woman said: “Well, white man, we want to see for ourselves.” I could not lose the opportunity of a service merely for the sake of my dignity; so I slipped off a shoe and a sock and showed the audience a white man’s foot, and they all agreed that it was beautiful. Was I speaking of dignity? Ah me! Dignity fades away to a vague impalpability, and finally becomes a cherished memory.