She Has Since Become Greatly Altered, I Hear,
For The Better; But Again And Again Have I Seen Sechele Send Her Out Of Church
To Put Her Gown On, And Away She Would Go With Her Lips Shot Out,
The Very Picture Of Unutterable Disgust At His New-Fangled Notions.
When he at last applied for baptism, I simply asked him how he,
having the Bible in his hand,
And able to read it, thought he ought to act.
He went home, gave each of his superfluous wives new clothing, and all
his own goods, which they had been accustomed to keep in their huts for him,
and sent them to their parents with an intimation that he had no fault
to find with them, but that in parting with them he wished to follow
the will of God. On the day on which he and his children were baptized,
great numbers came to see the ceremony. Some thought,
from a stupid calumny circulated by enemies to Christianity in the south,
that the converts would be made to drink an infusion of "dead men's brains",
and were astonished to find that water only was used at baptism.
Seeing several of the old men actually in tears during the service,
I asked them afterward the cause of their weeping; they were crying
to see their father, as the Scotch remark over a case of suicide,
"SO FAR LEFT TO HIMSELF". They seemed to think that I had
thrown the glamour over him, and that he had become mine.
Here commenced an opposition which we had not previously experienced.
All the friends of the divorced wives became the opponents of our religion.
The attendance at school and church diminished to very few besides
the chief's own family.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 45 of 1070
Words from 13671 to 13965
of 306638
