'But you must ask your husband first.'
The wife, in East Africa, is generally the more powerful influence in the house, and Rose would probably have been prepared to carry off the infant there and then. However, her husband proved to be quite of the same mind; and under the watchful care of the devoted foster-parents the poor little kigego will have every chance of bringing happiness into the house.
One more story of the triumph of light over darkness.
Under the banks of a river in West Africa there waited, some years ago, two or three canoes, concealed by the overhanging trees. A great man of the place was dead, and, according to the native custom, a little girl must be thrown alive into the river to drown. The few Christians had protested in vain against the murder, and, finding they could not prevent the deed, waited now in the shadow of the bank to save the child, if they could. They watched the poor little terrified creature flung into deep water, struggling and sinking. But, mercifully for her, one of the customs is to fasten a dozen or so of fowls about the neck of the victim, and the frightened birds, by their fluttering and flapping, kept her head above water until she drifted within reach of the rescuers. The little one was saved, and taken away from the neighbourhood, where her life would never have been secure.
And so, little by little, the sun rises upon the Dark Continent. One by one the old evil customs pass away. The Moorish galleys no longer hold the seas in dread; the slave caravan no longer leaves its terrible track of bleaching bones from Central Africa to the coast. Benin and Omdurman, and other 'cruel habitations,' have been thrown open and broken down. Wise heads have thought and planned, brave blood has been shed, noble lives laid down for the good of Africa, and, by slow degrees, the shadows are fleeing before the dawn.
THE FAIRIES' NIGHT.
HE foxgloves are the sentinels
That guard the fairies' sleep,
When twilight comes, and to their beds
The wee elves softly creep.
And each wild rose a cradle is
To lull them to repose,
While over them, so pink and white,
The petals tightly close.
They all night long serenely sleep,
Until the peep of day;
And then the roses open wide
To send the elves away.