"Master," he said, speaking in Arabic—which is a language which allows of nice distinctions—"this man was happy; he walked in the Forest of Happy Thoughts; why should I call him back to a land where there was neither sunshine nor happiness, but only night and pain and sickness?"
"You're a philosopher," said Sanders irritably.
"I am a follower of the Prophet," said Abiboo, the Kano boy; "and all things are according to God's wisdom."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AKASAVAS.
You who do not understand how out of good evil may arise must take your spade to some virgin grassland, untouched by the hand of man from the beginning of time. Here is soft, sweet grass, and never a sign of nettle, or rank, evil weed. It is as God made it. Turn the soil with your spade, intent on improving His handiwork, and next season—weeds, nettles, lank creeping things, and coarse-leafed vegetation cover the ground.
Your spade has aroused to life the dormant seeds of evil, germinated the ugly waste life that all these long years has been sleeping out of sight—in twenty years, with careful cultivation, you may fight down the weeds and restore the grassland, but it takes a lot of doing.
Your intentions may have been the best in disturbing the primal sod; you may have had views of roses flourishing where grass was; the result is very much the same.
I apply this parable to the story of a missionary and his work. The missionary was a good man, though of the wrong colour. He had large ideas on his duty to his fellows; he was inspired by the work of his cloth in another country; but, as Sanders properly said, India is not Africa.
Kenneth McDolan came to Mr. Commissioner Sanders with a letter of introduction from the new Administration.