Do You Remember A Sentence In Dr. Macgregor's Last
Sermon?
"What strange sights some of you will see!" Could there
be a stranger one than a decent-looking middle-aged man lying on
his chest in the verandah, raised on his elbows, and intently
reading a book, clothed only in a pair of spectacles?
Besides that
curious piece of still life, women frequently drew water from a
well by the primitive contrivance of a beam suspended across an
upright, with the bucket at one end and a stone at the other.
When the horses arrived the men said they could not put on the
bridle, but, after much talk, it was managed by two of them
violently forcing open the jaws of the animal, while a third seized
a propitious moment for slipping the bit into her mouth. At the
next change a bridle was a thing unheard of, and when I suggested
that the creature would open her mouth voluntarily if the bit were
pressed close to her teeth, the standers-by mockingly said, "No
horse ever opens his mouth except to eat or to bite," and were only
convinced after I had put on the bridle myself. The new horses had
a rocking gait like camels, and I was glad to dispense with them at
Kisagoi, a small upland hamlet, a very poor place, with poverty-
stricken houses, children very dirty and sorely afflicted by skin
maladies, and women with complexions and features hardened by
severe work and much wood smoke into positive ugliness, and with
figures anything but statuesque.
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