"DEAR OLD MAN,
"You must be in a deuce of a mess after the tornado. Just help
yourself to a set of my dry things. The shirts are in the bottom
drawer, the trousers are in the box under the bed, and then come
over here to the sing-song. My leg is dickey or I'd come across. -
Yours," etc.
Had there been any smelling salts or sal volatile in this
subdivision of the Ethiopian region, I should have forthwith fainted
on reading this, but I well knew there was not, so I blushed until
the steam from my soaking clothes (for I truly was "in a deuce of a
mess") went up in a cloud and then, just as I was, I went "across"
and appeared before the author of that awful note. When he came
round, he said it had taken seven years' growth out of him, and was
intensely apologetic. I remarked it had very nearly taken thirty
years' growth out of me, and he said the steward-boy had merely
informed him that "White man live for come from X," a place where he
knew there was another factory belonging to his firm, and he
naturally thought it was the agent from X who had come across.
You rarely, indeed I believe never, find an African with a gift for
picturesque descriptions of scenery. The nearest approach to it I
ever got was from my cook when we were on Mungo mah Lobeh. He
proudly boasted he had been on a mountain, up Cameroon River, with a
German officer, and on that mountain, "If you fall down one side you
die, if you fall down other side you die."
Graphic and vivid descriptions of incidents you often get, but it is
not Art. The effect is produced entirely by a bald brutality of
statement, the African having no artistic reticence whatsoever. One
fine touch, however, which does not come in under this class was
told me by my lamented friend Mr. Harris of Calabar. Some years ago
he had out a consignment of Dutch clocks with hanging weights, as is
natural to the Dutch clock. They were immensely popular among the
chiefs, and were soon disposed of save one, which had seen trouble
on the voyage out and lost one of its weights. Mr. Harris, who was
a man of great energy and resource, melted up some metal spoons and
made a new weight and hung it on the clock. The day he finished
this a chief came in, anxious for a Dutch clock, and Mr. Harris
forthwith sold him the repaired one. About a week elapsed, and then
the chief turned up at the factory again with a rueful countenance,
followed by a boy carrying something swathed in a cloth. It was the
clock.
"You do me bad too much, Mr. Harris," said the chief. Mr. Harris
denied this on the spot with the vehemence of injured innocence.
The chief shook his head and spat profusely and sorrowfully.
