Good’s clothes; but regardless of consequences I took to my heels and bestowed myself at a safe distance down the street, feeling that I had made sacrifices enough for the black race to be morally excusable for declining this unsavoury embrace. In the evening we sang several hymns to draw the people together. They all came and Abesula sat in the midst. Then Dr. Good preached to them, and some paid close attention. But after a while Abesula, interrupting, said: “Ngoot, won’t you soon be through preaching? For I wish that you two white men would sing and dance for the people; I don’t care for singing without dancing, and I don’t like preaching at all.” But we did not resort to this sensational method of holding a congregation. That same evening a score of Abesula’s wives engaged in a general quarrel with each other. An African family has no skeletons in the closet. They all hang outside the front door. The quarrel began with two of them, who, earlier in the evening, sat each within the door of her own house, on opposite sides of the street, reviling each other in language of loathsome indecency, until at last, when their intellectual resources of warfare were exhausted, the other women told them to come out into the street and fight it out. Whereupon the two women came out into the street and throwing off even their scant apparel of leaves, began to fight. To our surprise they did not scratch nor pull each other’s hair, as we had heard that women do when they fight. It was more like wrestling, although blows were delivered according to opportunity. They were fairly matched; but at last one was thrown to the ground, the other falling on top, and then clasping each other and fighting they rolled over and over in the street. When one of them was beaten the other women began to take sides and a large number became involved. Then the indiscreet Abesula interfered and they all joined together against him. To say that this large and unhappy family washed the dirty linen of their domestic infelicity in the street is putting it too mildly. The linen was foul and fit only for the fire. The women sought to shame the old savage out of countenance by the revelation of filthy secrets—but there are no secrets in Africa. Abesula replied with a shocking history of their immoralities which I fear was too true. He raged like an infuriated beast. He asked for a stick. Some one brought him one about ten feet long. As he talked he beat the ground with the stick and when it broke in his hands he called for another. He cursed them and threatened them with the hostility of supernatural powers by which they would die various sudden deaths in surprising forms, and suffer frightful penalties in another world. All this while he was pounding the ground, in which performance it was supposed that his wives were beaten by proxy. It was a very forcible way of expressing his opinion of them, and of showing them what their