At this distance of time I can smile; but such a response is a great trial of faith to a new missionary, especially if he has been led to expect startling results and many conversions attending the very first preaching of the Gospel. At first I was disheartened at the carnality and ignorance depicted in the faces of such audiences. Yet, after a few years of persistent work and patient waiting, I saw scores and scores of just such people spiritually and morally transformed; and more marvellous was the result from such a beginning. A certain old chief responded to a sermon on future punishment by saying that he would send one of his wives to hell in his place, and when I suggested that such an arrangement might be attended with serious difficulties he said he would send two of them. Then, when I told him that judging by the history he gave of his wives they would probably be going there on their own account, he said he supposed he would have to give God a couple of ivories for his ransom. One day I went to a new Fang town, Yengal, about two miles along the beach from Baraka. The tide was rising, and I had to wade through water for some distance; at one place it was to my waist. I preached in those dripping clothes. On the way to the town I overtook the chief and his head wife. He was very much pleased when he found I was going to his town, and he walked ahead of me, wading into the deeper streams to see whether or not they were too deep for me to wade; for they were rising fast with the tide. If I had not been already wet, he would have carried me over the streams, and all the deeper places. By the time we reached the town we were good friends. He called the people together, and they all came and gave me their attention during the service. I told them of a way that leads to eternal life, and a way that leads to destruction. When I had finished speaking, this chief said to me in a most earnest manner: “Now tell me plainly, white man, which road to take when I die? If you will tell me whether to take the road on the right, or the one on the left, I shall remember.” That he had been kind and courteous to me on the way, made me feel but the greater compassion that his mind was an abyss of darkness.