The Lampasas Daily Leader. (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 1521, Ed. 1 Tuesday, February 2, 1909 Page: 3 of 4
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Lampasas Area Newspaper Collection and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Lampasas Public Library.
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W/TfANfZt
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As,
V
AFRICA
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l
(
ONCE A MORTAL 'SIN
.MOW OUR ANCESTORS DISCOUR,
AGED PERJURY.
Pearful Punishments Threatened
Failed to Deter Sinful Men from
the Crime—Some Quaint
Folklore Oaths.
jr\
A'ilt
m
Invitation to the President from the Methodist Mis-
sionary Society Brings Forth a Surprising Expo-
sition of Missionary Conditions in Africa Which
May Be Improved Greatly Through the Coming
of the Great White Chief “Pesheya.”
ASHINGTON. — The ’
T heroes of the dark
/ continent are not all
W mighty hunters and ex-
T ▼ plorers. The hardest
fight that is waged for
the opening of the continent is not a
fight in the open with wild beasts or
howling savages while the world looks
on and applauds. Rather it is a grap-
pling in the dark with shadows, the
shadows of spiritual gloom that loom
so black and yet are se- elusive to the
grasp. It is a fight for the spread of
light in dark places waged by men and
women unused to physical hardships
and with a breeding that renders them
peculiarly sensitive to the spiritual
wear and tear of their work. It is a
fight without fanfare, without an audi-
ence, and too often without immediate
results.
If President Roosevelt accepts the
invitation of the Methodist Missionary
society to take part in missionary work
while traveling through Africa he will
have thrown the weight of his influ-
ence in the scales for a cause particu-
larly in need of such help. In the same
way aj3 the president’s declamations
against race suicide unquestionably
have helped domestic life, so perhaps
he can throw some light on a phase
of civilizing work peculiarly misunder-
stood by the majority of white people
at home and abroad. It requires no
great stretch of the imagination to get
a vision of the president preaching a
common-sense religion to a black au-
dience, just as he has preached do-
mesticity, fearlessness, strenuousness
and a great many kindred virtues to
the people in America. But it requires
an intimate knowledge of the African
character, its keen sense of authority
and position, its veneration for “big
chiefs” of whatever country, to gauge
the tremendous influence his words
would carry.
A,
Great Aid to Missionaries.
Even if the president should not
take an active part in the work, he un-
doubtedly will visit the mission sta-
tions, and the mere fact that a chief
of such bigness that the full scope of
the African imagination hardly can
take in his orbit visits familiarly with
the missionaries will give a very help-
ful prestige to them in the eyes of the
natives. Respect for his own chief is
the bone and sinew of the African’s
code of morals and is, in fact, one with
his religion. Combined with this is a
surprising penetration into the “who’s
who” of other nations. It takes an
African native something less than
five minutes to know who is the “real
thing” and who merely masquerades
in the borrowed feathers of authority.
The hostile attitude toward missions
sometimes taken by individual white
magistrates often has done incalcul-
able harm to the work of the mission-
ary, because these magistrates in the
native eye are invested with dignity
as the representatives of the great
white chiefs “pesheya” (on the other
side—meaning of the ocean). The
coming in person of one of the great-
est of these chief to the house of their
own “umfundisi” (teacher) will neu-
tralize the unfriendliness of any resi-
dent magistrate.
On the other hand, President Roose-
velt in his writings certainly will
touch on the practical side of a work
of such significance as that of the
Christian missions. The question of
the capacity of the African native for
civilization must be answered at the
mission stations if it is answered at
all
Missionaries have opened the coun-
try to white men, and the chief high-
ways penetrating the African conti-
nent still are called “missionary
roads.” When Livingstone’s house
was sacked, his books torn and scat-
tered to the winds and his medicine
bottles broken in revenge for his
championship of the natives against
this disaster was the impetus that
drove him to his real work as an ex-
plorer. No one ever has accomplished
more with fewer resources. To the
last he remained always the mission-
ary, traveling among the natives as
one who sought only their good and
had nothing to fear from them. All
the world knows how Livingstone’s
work became the inspiration of Stan-
ley’s career and resulted ultimately in
the real opening of the dark continent.
Even before Livingstone’s time his
father-in-law, Robert Moffat, traveled
with his wife and babies through
South Africa when no one else dared
venture outside of the white settle-
ments, and no one thought of molest-
ing him. He was the only man who
had any influence over Moselikatse,
the most bloodthirsty chief in South
Africa.
T-he great Norwegian missionary,
Bishop Schreuder, held a similar posi-
tion in the regard of the fierce Zulu
chief Cetewayo, and it was Schreuder’s
presence in the English camp that
gave the natives courage to surrender
themselves to the British when they
had been vanquished in the last Zulu
war in 1870. His house was the only
white man’s dwelling that was left
standing in Zululand. The savage
army, drunk with temporary victory,
split in two, one division passed over
the hills to the north of Schreuder’s
station, the other over the hills on the
south, for the chiefs knew that*in the
frenzy of battle their braves could not
be restrained from destroying what-
ever came in their way.
Missionary work in most parts of
Africa has lost much of its spectacular
features. It now is mostly a matter
of hard, grinding, monotonous work.
The popular conception of missionaries
includes two figures. One is that of a
spiritual fanatic bent mainly on teach-
ing the savages to sing hymns instead
of howling war songs, the dupe usual-
ly of wily savages who feign “conver-
sion” while laughing in their new mis-
sionary gingham 'sleeves. The other
is that of a clever self-seeker exploit-
ing the childish native to his own ad-
vantage.
The True Missionary.
There is a third figure, very different
from either. Kipling has written with
sympathetic insight the story of the
obscure official or non-commissioned
officer in his struggle to beat civiliza-
tion into the savage “half devil and
half child.” The “Sergeant What’s-’Is-
Name” of the mission field has yet to
find his interpreter—or her interpreter,
for the sergeant is just as often a
woman.
Life at an African mission station is
very much the same throughout the
continent. The day begins , usually
with the call of the bell at sunrise in
the summer and an hour or two before
that time in the winter, for in the mat-
ter of early rising it is the white man
who must adapt himself to the native
habit. After a brief sunrise prayer the
boys and girls of the school are mus-
tered in the courtyard; they shoulder
their hoes, and it is away to the corn-
field or the sweet potato patch. Stand-
ing in a row at the bottom of the field,
they lift their heavy hoes far above
their heads and bring them down with
a force that sends the iron blade far
into the ground, lift them again and
let them fall with rhythmic regularity.
As they do so they chant in a slow,
heavy monotone, which is their near-
est approach to singing, any incidents
in their life that may be uppermost
in their minds—the ripening of the
corn, the marriage of the chief’s
daughter or any of the happenings of
the day. Sometimes the work lags and
needs the constant impatient “She-
shani” (hurry) of the white teacher.
The African holds a theory quite the
opposite of Darwin’s; he believes that
monkeys were evolved from a race of
lazy people that loafed leaning on the ( farmer, gardener, builder, architect
the aggressions of the border ruffians, handles of their hoes, until the useful | and furniture makes Thf farm must
implements grew into tails, to the
everlasting shame of the loafers.
Breakfast consists of one of the three
staples, sweet potatoes, squash or corn,
either as mush or on the cob. It is
eaten from platters at a bare table
with a quick lunch effect, rather a test
of discipline, for the native loves to
squat on a straw mat and take his
time about chewing. No greater dis-
courtesy can be offered a native than
to interrupt his meal. But the school
bell is inexorable.
Bible Images Familiar.
Classes and recitations and more
particularly lessons to be prepared of-
fer more violence to the native preju-
dices. He likes to hear the Bible
stories or stories of other countries and
to read them for himself when he has
mastered the combination of letters in-
to familiar sounds. The oriental images
of the Bible are perfectly familiar to
him. The idea of the patriarchs of the
Old Testament living in tents as cattle
men and yet being really kings, which
is such a puzzle to city bred white
children, is no puzzle at all to them. It
was thus their own kings lived when
they were in their glory. In the same
way the agricultural figures of speech
in the parables of Christ fit right into
their own speech. Their favorite books
in the Bible are those that abound in
a picturesque imagery such as the
Apocalypse, the Book of Job and—
best of all—The Song of Solomon.
It is a very different thing .when it
comes to learning a foreign language
and mastering the intricacies of gram-
mar, arithmetic and geography. Gram-
mar might as well be relegated to the
outer darkness at once. When you
have taught an African native the dif-
ference between a verb and a noun
you have taught him about as much as
his mind can grasp. On the other
hand, the children learn easily foreign
words and expressions -in a parrot-like
way. A young native who has worked
for a white man for a, month or two
has no difficulty in calling his breth-
ren “black devil” and “damn nigger.”
Harsh Language an Obstacle.
As for arithmetic, it is not easy to
learn the multiplication table, when to
say “nine- times eight” you have to
let out the following mouthful of
sound: “Tata isishiyangalolonye pinda
nge sishangalombili.” But the natives
have an adjuncT to difficult enuncia-
tion, a sort of first aid, in the language
of the fingers. Beginning from right to
left, the little finger means one, the
left thumb means six, the left forefin-
ger seven, and so on. If time or energy
fail you, you simply wag a finger, or if
the number goes into the tens, you
wag two fingers, and the deed is done.
Your breath is saved.
The white woman teacher in a
school of eighty or a hundred natives
is likely to find, even if she has one or
two native assistants, that her position
as the motor nerve of this too, too
solid mass of African flesh is wearing,
to say the least. The industrial part
of the work is not so difficult as the
purely intellectual. It* is not so hope-
less a task to make the African native
fashion something with his hands as
to make him grasp anything with his
brain. The women have learned in
their native handicrafts such as straw
plaiting a deftness of touch that make
them fairly apt in the acquisition of
the domestic arts of sewing, cooking,
baking, washing, ironing and cleaning.
Missionary’s Garden Necessary.
Meantime the boys are engaged in
the work of the farm or in building or
carpentry. The pastor of the station
is fortunate if he has a white man to
assist him in superintending. these
branches of the work. More likely he,
in addition to his cares as pastor, is
physician and magistrate, his own
provide food for the boys and girls of
the school. The garden must supply
fruit and vegetables for the mission-
ary’s table, for he soomlearns that he
cannot keep his strength lohg.if he at-
tempts to live as a native. He must
have a variety of food and, incidental-
ly, tablecloths and napkins. A noted
African traveler has said that white
men die in the tropics not for want
of the necessities of life but for want
of the luxuries. Besides, his house and
garden must be an object lesson in
civilized living quite as important as
his preaching.
Must Build His Own House.
Shelter must be provided for teach-
ers and pupils, and also for horses,
calves, pigs and chickens. Brick is a
favorite material, for the African
woods usually are too hard to be
worked easily. The minister fresh
from a theological seminary may find
that building a brick kiln with noth-
ing but African labor is quite as diffi-
cult as to construct Greek sentences.
And that is the beginning. He prefers
not to think of the masonry, the put-
ting in of doors and windows and the
thatching of the roof. At least he does
not -need to worry about the floors.
The native girls take that part of the
building into their own hands. They
simply fill it up with an even layer of
red soil taken from an ant heap. They
rub it and pound it and sprinkle it,
and rub it again till it shines like
black polished marble, and there is
the floor. Healthy? Well, no; but it-
is cheap. When night comes the na-
tives gather around the fire in the
kitchen or the schoolhouse to sing.
They pick up tunes with surprising
readiness, and repeating them with
trills and “variations” is an amuse-
ment that never palls on them.
It gives "the missionary respite foi
his letters home or to fall asleep over
a book or to go out and look at the
stars and wonder how it would seem
to talk to a man of his own kind or to
hear good music or merely to see elec
trie lights, to feel hard pavements un-
der his feet and hear the clanging of
street cars. Or he may wonder how
in all the petty worries that sap his
strength he is to keep the freshness of
mind that' will enable him to present
spiritual ideals in the guise to appeal
to a savage people. But in this re-
spect he often feels that he is past
praying for.
During one of the occasional out-
croppings of pure thought with which
the recent Ruef trial in Judge Ca-
baniss’ court in San Francisco was il-
luminated, it was stated by a distin-
guished prosecutor that “perjury has
become the greatest crime of the age.”
Perhaps the trouble is that perjury
does not entail such dire calamities
nowadays as it once did. Delving into
the subject with the spur of curiosity,
we learn that two or three centuries
ago it cost something to swear falsely.
Then it was a mortal sin rather than a
simple crime, and some of the domestic
troubles which followed.were a curse
running to the seventh generation,
death from a lingering disease within
12 months, or being turned into a
stone, swallowed up by the earth and
ever afterward crawling about as a
vampire.
Those punishments which deterred,
one believed them. As a matter of
fact, few did, and people committed
perjury as merrily in the good, old
seventeenth century as in the twen-
tieth. Then, as now, the moral man
spoke the truth for practical moral
reasons and the immoral man lied for
immoral reasons.
Superstition has always been the
basis of oaths, and their practical
value has depended on the depth of the
superstition. . That, of course, is evi-
dent enough, as all that differentiates
an oath from a plain statement is that
one introduces an element of religious
faith. In California taking an oath
requires simply that a witness raise
his right hand while the clerk in-
forms him that he solemnly swears to
“tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, so help you
God.” The charm of legendary at-
taches to the explanation that the
hand of the witness was originally
raised to show that he had not a
weapon concealed in it, but this is
apocryphal. : 1
Touching a sacred object is a world-
wide method of oath taking. In earlier
ages one swore by the sun or by a
great river or some other awesome
thing in nature. Even now the
Ganges is the most binding oath to a
Hindu. The Tungaz witness still
brandishes a knife before the sun, say-
ing: “If I lie may the sun plunge
sickness into my entrails like this
knife.” The Somali, administering an
oath, declares: “God is before us and
this stone is from Amr Bur,” naming
a sacred mountain. The man to be
sworn then takes the stone and says:
“I shall not lie in this agreement.”
It would be pleasant to believe that
he does not.—San Francisco Chronicle;
DUST EXPERT IN A WAY.
“No matter where you live and how-
ever high in the air you always find
dust settling on everything every-
where, but,” said the near-sighted
man, “if you want to realize this fact
as you never did before you want to
wear spectacles and work at some
employment that requires constant
bending over.
“Fourteen times a day, or as much
oftener as you look, you will find
your glasses covered with fine par-
ticles of dust. Maybe you don’t look,
and then maybe some bigger particle,
some speck that is by comparison
veritable bowlder of dust, settles
there square in your line of vision
where it may not obstruct your sight
but where it cannot fail to arrest your
attention. Then when you take them
off to remove that bowlder you find
your glasses covered with dust in
finer particles, as you would find
them, indeed, however often you
might look.
“Over such an area as that of New
York, for instance, there are tons of
dust floating in the air, as though,
perhaps without figuring out its
weight, many people, such as house-
wives and storekeepers, are aware;
but perhaps nobody is reminded of
this so constantly as the man who
wears spectacles and who bends over
at his work, and on whose glasses,
where it is ever before him, dust is
constantly settling.”
Nearly a Hero.
“Hands up.”
The passengers on the Pullman car
took in the situation at a glance and
did exactly what the train robber told
them to.
At the points of his guns he relieved
them of their valuables. But at the
sight of one woman, he paused with a
start.
“Who are you, woman,” he de-
manded.
“I,” she quavered, “am Miss Fay de
Fluffie, the well-known actress. Here
are my jewels—take them all!”
The hold-up held up his
proudly.
“No,” he replied, “I may be
ber, but I am no. press agent,
your wealth!”
head,
a rob-
Keep
Hard Task for Government.
Gin is still used as a medium of ex-
change in some parts of the Niger
country in Africa, but the government
discourages it. Owing to the extreme
conservatism in these districts the task
is difficult.
True and Faithful.
One does not look for the whole
truth upon a tombstone, but there are
exceptions to the rule, as is shown
by the example furnished in a church-
yard in Hagerstown, Md.
This touching epitaph runs as fol-
lows, except that fictitious names have,
for obvious reasons, been substituted
here for the real ones:
Mary F.,
Wife of W'alter Jenkins.
Died December 20, 1884, aged 70
years nine months.
She was a true and faithful wife ta
each of the following persons:
Jacob Wineman.
Henry Snow.
Philip Harrow.
Walter Jenkins.
—Harper’s Weekly.
Into Temptation.
Hicks—So, Mr. Gayboy is going to
spend a fortnight at Old Orchard while
his wife is in the mountains?
Wicks—Yes; what of it?
Hicks—Oh, nothing—only she ought
to tie a string around his finger to re-
mind him he is married.
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Vernor, J. E. The Lampasas Daily Leader. (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 5, No. 1521, Ed. 1 Tuesday, February 2, 1909, newspaper, February 2, 1909; Lampasas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth910923/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Lampasas Public Library.