Black Sheep: Iv. The Last Mail

IV. THE LAST MAIL

BY JEAN KENYON MACKENZIE

LOLODORF, WEST AFRICA, February 5.
MY DEARS, — I write you at my old table, on the very same cracks. There against the wall is my little old fat chest of drawers, that still thrills me with a sense of actual opulence beyond any piece of furniture in the world. Last night, when I came into this room, I seemed to find myself and you, as I had found so many friends along the way, and happiness.

February 8.
You are to know about the journey hither from the beach. On Wednesday morning I left Batanga with two loads, and at Kribi I met Mameya and a man of the Mvele tribe with the Lehmans’ jinrickshaw. The jinrickshaw is like a small dogcart, and under the hood of it I jogged along for four days, along a perfect highway between two painted forests; and all the old things were seen to have passed away. Mameya’s little strong body trotted in the shafts; Nkot pushed behind; myself, I lounged on the seat and pondered with a kind of degenerate homesickness on the past.
Where were the seven deaths to be met in the old way? Where were the swamps under their fathoms of green, and the hills which one climbed on one’s face, and the perilous river crossings? All the sense of sweet intimacy with the forest has gone with the trail, and out of the terrific tumult of the building of the road runs this immaculate highway quiet in the sun. When I think of the uproar of the days and the outraged earth and the great cries of the falling trees and the enforced efforts of the forest tribes among the débris, I feel some lack of zest in the journey on the complacent highway. Yet it is a wonderful road and most creditable to those white men who camped along it. I suppose that they are well out of this by now, travailing in other forests and glad not to have to live ‘on top of the paths’ they have completed.
I had a most comfortable journey, though Mameya did pull in at night to miserable towns, because he had relatives among the townspeople, I suppose, and I don’t know the towns on top of this new road. But we did very well. I was happy with my hands between my knees all the idle day. I had a grass mat that I would spread out on the road or in a palaver house, and sitting on this I would drink hot tea out of my thermos bottle, and the carrier would give me a piece of smoking yam on a little pointed stick. I did not take my tent, but slept in little bark houses. Only the long divide of Pikiliki was familiar. There the river talks the very same palaver among the rocks and the forest drops peace upon the highway, and there I had to walk.
It is easy to talk about the path, but when I think about telling you about the people, I can’t begin. So many Christians greeted me on the highway.
It did n’t use to be so at all. But now I can’t make any sort of time on a journey, for friendly greetings, and for little gatherings of townspeople who call me to speak in the houses which they have built for God, — little houses where they sit on logs and are immensely happy. I spoke in lots of such places, and lots of times I sat in my dogcart by the roadside and talked to the people. Once I was walking and in the shade of a tree I met a woman. She was a Christian, she told me, and held my hand and beamed upon me in a particular way they have. Presently she undid her head-covering, and out of the puffs of her hair she took a little coin — five pfennigs — and this she gave me. I was astonished, at the money and at the spirit, but I tried to be polite and to know just how to accept her five pfennigs.
I was surprised, too, by the emotion with which my friends met me, trembling and with tears. At Lam, where a church has just been organized, Bian and Nshicko and old Mejio laughed and cried and held my hands. ‘ We see your face again. Ah, Missa Makingia, this long time that we have parted, always we have prayed that we might see your face again. And God is willing. Did you forget us? Did you remember us? Do you remember how you said to us thus and so?’ They put me in Bian’s little clean brown house, and there was to be no parting from me, they said, all that day. Still it was allowed that Makingia had to bathe.
We had meetings, one in the church and one in the palaver house in the evening, by the wood fires. Lam is a big centre now; five hundred come to the service of a Sunday. The church was organized perhaps a month ago, and it is curious to see how deeply mystical a sense of the fact of the Church in their midst the older Christians have. We gabbled a great deal all the sunny afternoon, and after the night came in among the palm trees in the village street. We were beautifully happy. After we said good-night I heard Bian and Nshicko laughing together under the eaves of the house, and when I asked why, they said they rejoiced because of some ‘arguments’ I had made in the meeting.
I arrived at Lolodorf at the end of a golden day. Mrs. Lehman met me about an hour out, and a little later down the road came those of the schoolboys who knew me, capering with flags; and some of them are young men that were little boys, and those that are still little boys are younger brothers! It was sweet to see them and I was happy. Bitum was quite silly with pleasure. He was sure that my men were going to spill me out of the cart, and he shouted staccato directions as he ran in front of the jinrickshaw, where he had to be nimble or perish.
Lolodorf has changed almost beyond recognition. But the house is the same and the Lehmans are the same, and I could not sleep the first night for old familiar thoughts that came upon me in my old room.

LOLODORF, February 14.
To-day Mrs. Lehman and I were in a town where often I used to go to see a woman who is a Christian now, a tall woman furiously tattooed. I always loved her, and now when I sit in her house and think, ‘This little brown house is the house of a Christian woman, and that is Nkata,’ I feel the uses of the years.
She came in from her work, — cutting brush she had been, — and her body with its terrific mesh of bluish black tattoo was wet with the dew. Mrs. Lehman was telling her that her little daughter, who is to be graduated with Mrs. Emerson’s advanced class of girls, must learn now from her mother the works of women — gardening and fishing and hunting of firewood and cooking. But Nkata, it seems, has the old golden maternal dream for her one little daughter. She unwound her bit of rag from a cut on her leg, — the scars of her profession, — and she said that Mban must not work as her mother does. The humanity of this was of course very touching, but we called up the shade of a future husband, who for all his lack of definite feature knew his own mind and how to drive little Mban to her duty, without any particular care of her shins.

February 16.
Out under the bright moon and bright Sirius and the worshipful Canopus, I have been talking with the boys the old palavers. After all these years — is the world really round as the white people say? They do not doubt, they say, but they wonder! And beyond the stars,what? Ah,what indeed!

EFULEN, March 18.
I should like to tell you all about the trip across country. It was an interesting trip, rather rough but not rough the first day. The next morning we turned off the main way at Mebem, and into a cross-country path of which I may now say that it is as bad as they say it is. Which proves, as I told my men, that a scandal is not necessarily a lie. We walked for about two hours on an old path running through overgrown clearings, the worst kind of walking. At noon or so we came out on a cleared path, and passed through a populous district where is that great rock upon which God rested on his way from the interior to the beach. I shall be telling you more of this, for Parnassus it was and looked to be: really an adequate Parnassus, a tremendous granite crown to a hill dominating the hills of the forest. Nzwango told me tales of this place of which, as I say, I shall write at length. We were ‘ tied,’ you would think, to make all-day stages. It was all of five o’clock when we got into Nkotoven and were received by dear old Zamo, who was grieved to see her ’little daughter’ so weary. Before you could guess it there was a kettle on the fire and I was in bed, with Zamo sitting by the door of the hut in the moonlight. Now I must hear much talk of the goodness of God and his power. Myself, I am always very conscious of the goodness of God when I am on the road.
I put up next night with Abote, a person habitually grave, but now all laughter because I had come, and with sudden gay notes in her lovely deep voice. That night, having no lantern, I went to bed in the moonlight, a mountain misty moonlight. I laced my tent flap to the ground and went cold to bed, to think of wild cattle and gorillas and driver ants. To such times of weakness are women prone.

EFULRN, April 1.
Your letter is a perfectly reasonable letter, and the women’s questions are perfectly reasonable, except when they ask if I am ‘making good.’ Even that question, addressed to the right quarter, would be perfectly reasonable. As for me, I am a perfectly good dead cat. I have even perfectly good excuses that would read well in a missionary biography. I spare them.
Efulen station is the oldest Bulu station. It is now fifteen or sixteen years old. There are, as a result of the work, something over two hundred church members, and an immense parish, with adherents in innumerable villages. Two thousand people assemble of a Sunday. The work is exceedingly encouraging, the people exceedingly responsive. A minimum force for this station would be a minister and his wife, a doctor and his wife, a schoolteacher, and a single woman. That is. three men and three women. This year we have had a minister, a teacher, and myself. We hardly touch the work. I have been at the head of the house, of the girls’ school, and of the women’s work. I run the house with a cook, a washboy, a steward, and a cook’s mate. In the morning I oversee the girls’ outdoor work and prepare sewing for the sewing classes, and hold meetings for the women for a few days before and after the first Sunday in the month, when they come in from outlying districts by the hundreds. In the afternoon I oversee the girls’ work in school; and on Wednesdays I have a meeting with the women who are leaders in their districts and who report to me conditions in the towns to which I cannot find time to go in these days, and they report meetings held. We pray together for individuals; I have a list of such. Sometimes at night I go down the hill to the towns with a lantern, to do some business that I could not find time to do in the day, and always I visit the little girls’ dormitories in the evening. And once in a while I help the poor schoolteacher struggle with a case of illness, for we have no doctor. It is horrible to see people die for lack of a doctor.
I must stop, and I have not given you the sense of a black face at every door, at every window, and the murmur of ‘ Mama! Mama! ’ that beats upon one all day; and how sometimes we must say to the women who have come to speak of their souls’ salvation, ‘Go away now, come to-morrow, ’ — because our voice is worn out.
I am always your friend.

LOLODORF, September 3.
Yesterday I went from house to house in this neighborhood, and there were women who remembered me, said they, when I was a little girl. At noon I spread my mat on the pole bed across from Meyee’s bed where she lies in her little brown hut — some sort of nervous disorder — imagine it. We talked together through the noon hour; she was telling me that the people of the town were telling her husband, Woneli, that he must make magic for her or she will die. ‘Let her die first,’ says Woneli; ‘what is death to a Christian?’ Meyée quite bursts with pride at Woneli’s vicarious fortitude.
I said I wanted to go to Abwang, whose child had died; Abwang is a church member. A woman who sat by the door of the hut said she would show me the path; I thought this just a common courtesy; I did n’t know that we were to chin our way up the banks of the Bekui and hang on to sapling trees for an hour each way. She certainly was good to me. Once she turned around to find me hung up; back she clambered, and she said, very sweetly I thought, ‘You are not alone in trouble.’
Coming to the river bank, we called, and a man came over for us in a canoe. One at a time we crossed, kneeling in the prow. Up the bank again and through a little stretch of forest to a hamlet on the hillside, very quiet in the sunny afternoon. Abwang lay on her pole bed with her newest baby by her side; three children she has left. I found that we were six women in the hut, all Christians; I was much struck with such a gathering in that little brown shelter. I asked did Bekalli, the father of the child who died — did he make the usual accusations against the mother? And the women said, No, he just sat in his house and felt grief as they did. By and by I saw him in his palaver house, where he just sat and felt grief.
When I got back to Lcmizhwon, old Anzia Mpila gave me three cassava cakes, — a considerable present in these days of famine,—and the women said, I —

September 6 or 7 or 8.
Too bad, I have forgotten what they said. But here is what I saw to-night. I am in Zenebot, half way to Lam, staying with decent folk, Ze Mpioga — thick-headed but good. And this is what I saw: —
I went with my lantern into Ze’s little hut; I sat down by the fire, and there was the family too. Mendom was heating some water in a big black kettle. The youngest Mpioga, still without teeth, was howling in the arms of little brother. Presently to the light of my lantern Mendom brings her three-yearold; she empties her hot water into a wooden bowl; with a sponge of crushed leaves she washes first one little foot, then the other. Kid howls. His feet are sore, poor little duffer — he holds out his hand for his father to hold. Mother is relentless until both feet are soaked; then she opens a little leaf packet: there is salve made of the bark of the redwood tree; she adds a little palm oil to this, and very carefully she anoints the little feet. The sobs subside and the child walks off on his heels. Now the mother pours more water into the bowl, takes the fretful baby out of the hands of little brother, stands the weeny thing in her belt of beads on the clay floor, and swabs her down with water. There is the familiar initial gasp. With her maternal hands she cleanses that little person all glittering with wet, and she says, looking at me and smiling, ‘ God has sent me much trouble.’ And the father says, apropos of nothing, ‘All these have been baptized.’ I sit on my stool by the fire and feel steeped in the most human domesticity. Everywhere in the world at this hour little children are whimpering over their evening ablutions. It is a mistake to think that any child of a good mother escapes. — So much for the illusions of little boys who would like to be heathen.

LAM, September 8.
It is a sunny morning, a great treat in these days. I have Bella’s little new baby for company; I heard about her the night I left Bibia. When I told the schoolgirls about her, up pipes one, ‘ Great thanks! The tribe is increased! ’ The conventional congratulation, I suppose. The little darling! The black women say of a sister’s child, ‘I did not bear it, but I see it my child.’

EFULEN, December 16.
Here, my dears, is Efulen, but not just as I left it, for where we were three there are now seven missionaries. Lots of nice young people. But here are the hills, in their most lovely moment of color; for it is the spring, and the rose and amber and pale green of the new leaf is everywhere under the morning haze. Lovely, lovely valleys; lovely, lovely mountains; like the mountains and the valleys in the backgrounds of primitive Italian pictures. So much beauty frees the spirit, and I would like to do nothing for quite a while but hang over the brink of the clearing.
I left Thursday morning, was on the road all day, turned off the highway at about four, and was in the Bulu town of Tyange before dark. Had a little meeting and then to bed. Off after prayers at daylight for a long, long day in the forest and over the most incredible, heart-breaking, beautiful hills. Paths brown with leaves, promising always to do better and then rearing like a mean horse. It is not much of a path for a chair, and I walked ahead of little Bama and big Se Menge, who felt outraged, I should suppose, by the treacheries of nature. We made the town of Abiete, rebuilt since my day, by four o’clock. A big clean town. I asked for the headman; was told, he is at the beach. Eké! I did not know then that he had gone to the beach a few days before tied up to a pole in a blanket and carried by soldiers. Dr. Weber investigated a case of torture in this town, and found that the headman had tied one of his women to a pole, had beaten her, and had burned her with a torch. The doctor sent pictures of this woman to the executive at the beach, and the headman was arrested. Said he would not go, and so was carried. All this a day or two before my caravan put up for the night in the town of Abiete, where we were entertained with extreme and careful courtesy. Only this seemed to me queer — that no woman was allowed to see me alone, and when a group wmuld come into my hut a man stood on guard. I knew there must be some palaver on; when I came here I found out just what.
I got in to Efulen the next day at three, a good journey, not a pain in my good little body nor a reproach for ill treatment. I must tell you, the day before I left for Efulen I attended an adjourned meeting of Presbytery, and heard six young fellows examined with a view to coming under the care of Presbytery — young bucks that want to be ministers, my dears, and I knew them when they were in knickerbockers (note, figure of speech). Ze Tembe, a dashing, handsome young man, full of innocent swagger and a very real eloquence. He has been a Christian for perhaps five years, has never since his conversion had a serious palaver, wears his beautiful youth and his Christian successes with a kind of spirited and happy humility, is as definite as Peter in his expectation of an unblemished devotion to his Master. Next him, fumbling at his cap and answering in a low voice, my Bitum — no dimples. Yes, he once had a palaver; no, never since; yes, he thinks in his heart that some may have been converted by his preaching, perhaps so, yes, perhaps so; and behind him sit his two brothers, who were indeed converted by his preaching — Melom, a strong evangelist and a man; and Etundé, as old, perhaps, as Bitum, but childlike; beloved by his elders; just in from service to the Yaunde tribes; making naïve gestures upon this solemn occasion, stretching his arms and sprawling as men do in the palaver houses, and without any sense of the direction of questions, so that if he were not handled by as wise a man as Mr. Dager, our Etunde would lose out. Between these two brothers, Melandi, whom you may remember, who has been for years a faithful and blameless evangelist;.who, imagine it in this country, went virtuous to a marriage with a virtuous girl. There is no emotional quality in his response, but a very convincing and steadfast devotion. Then there are Bikwe and Nna, another brother of Bitum, and Mengun — these last are not present.

LOLODORF, March 2.
To-day is the first Sunday of the month. We had a congregation of something like nine hundred fairly orderly Ngumba and Bulu people, who achieved the feat of rising to sing a hymn and reseating themselves when the hymn was sung, in quite a seemly fashion. We used, when we rose to sing, to stampede in a sort of stationary fashion; that is, we did not desert but we exercised within limits — great yawnings and stretchings and scuffings of feet. So for a long time we were suppressed; we sat through our hymns. Of late we rise from time to time, and with growing distinction. To-day over sixty men confessors presented themselves to Mr. Emerson, or were presented by the Christians of their neighborhoods.

BENITO, SPANISH GUINEA, March 16.
I write to you in pencil, my dears, because it is easy and I must do the easy thing or just nothing at all. And I would rather do that last anyway. Yesterday, on the last lap of my journey, I was wishing I were one of the old canoes under the eaves of the houses. When a canoe gets old here, they cut away the ends and turn it upside down under the eaves. There it is for a seat; it never journeys forth any more. All these little cabins by the sea have such a bench under the thatch outside the door. And all these little villages are full of the emblems of the sea, and the wind from the sea and the talk of the sea; it is extraordinary to what an extent the sea dominates its margins. At all my little meetings on this beach journey, I have heard the Lord’s prayer in Benga, a most beautiful tongue; the sighing swell and ebb of it is like a voice of the sea, the voice of many waters, unified in a strain of passionate melancholy. I have never heard any spoken word so compounded of the elements and the emotions. But I have seen so much new beauty in this last week, and in such a perceptive fashion as fatigue produces, that I feel very wise, — you know that wisdom which answers from the deeps to the face of new beauty and then is submerged again, like perceptions in a dream.
From Batanga to the Campo the coast is of an extraordinary beauty. Here the cliffs to the east shut out the morning, and to the west the thin veil of the forest is pierced and slit and torn by the bright pallor of the sea. I always imagined that the forest by the coast was fairly inhabited, and so, used and stale. But there are empty miles between the villages where the virgin forest comes darkly down to the white foam of the sea; the little path runs between these in and out of the gloom, over the rocks and out upon the sands. Very few people travel north and south on this coast; one is alone for hours. In the afternoon is another beauty: then the forest is full of sifted light; there is no mystery, but a kind of ordered magnificence of avenues and terraces and deliberate surf. Everything waits for something understood and adequate.
Thursday at one we came to Evune, where Mbule Ngubi is the Minister. You must read your Theocritus if you are to have any sense of that village by the sea, sunk in the shade of cocoa trees, the little bamboo houses filled with the wind and the murmur of the sea, nets drying in the sun or hanging furled under the eaves, canoes drawn up under the cocoanut palms that crowd about the path from the beach to the settlement. When I came out of the glare of the open into the dusk of the cocoa trees, grand young men shook me by the hand. I don’t know who they were —the gilded youth of Evune.
Mbule Ngubi has what we call a ‘deck house,’ a house on posts with a plank floor. He is a tall man, perhaps fifty, with a grand manner and a beautiful simplicity. He put me into a clean room flooded with light and wind. Himself, he spread the bamboo slats of the bed with clean sheets. Water was brought me; I bathed and lay with my helmet over my eyes in that little chamber by the sea, and gave thanks. We had our supper together. ‘ My sister in the Lord is here,’ says Mbule Ngubi, ‘and shall I not kill a chicken?’ We had a chicken and mashed plantain, with a sauce of palm oil. Here we had an evening service in that bamboo house which the people of Evune built for their Lord; quite a beautiful little chapel. So much order, so much kindness, so many bright stars above the little village and the wide sea!

BATANGA, KAMERUN, May 3.
We (myself and Mr. Cunningham, who has been visiting the people of God in the Gaboon) arrived from Benito in the middle of last night. We came up in the Robina, a thirty-foot boat that carries a mainsail and a jib. There is a deck of adjustable planks over the stern and an awning above this, but the awning must come down with the change of wind. Mattresses are laid out on the platform and the passengers laid out on the mattresses. So sweet, my dears, to lie with the boat-side on a level with you and with your nose all but cutting the water when you hang over.
We had four of a crew and four black passengers mixed up with the rigging and our boxes. There was a great laughing and the characteristic bubbling of Benga talk — the crew are Benga men because this tribe are expert seamen. If you could only see our captain, Iveki, son of the great Ibia, born when I was, but, oh, my dears, of such a different kind of poetry. He is quite the perfection of his type, a type that you will never see — and that is a pity. I hunt the word that will present him to you. His beauty is all slim and eager in action, and in repose is fairly massive. He sits idly, his hands at ease, but his action is immediate and exact. He smiles for secret reasons suddenly and slyly, and again he smiles suddenly and frankly. His teeth are amazing, so perfect and small. His chin is slight above his strong neck; his nostrils are delicate; he has the beard of adolescence and the eyes of a woman. Sex plays with him a double game — and I have seen other Africans who show the same expenditure of charm — a feminine grace all velvet over the rock of heathen man.
The wind served us ill; we had long hours of rolling calm and of the most outrageous sunlight. One day we rowed for hours close in, to the sound of a tremendous surf; we were trying to land, and at last we came to the sacred rock of which it is not well to speak the name, and to which tobacco is offered and rum is poured into the sea for libation. We were too poor to perform these rites — or too impious. Back of this rock is a little place of calm, a haven; we went ashore here and made a real meal in a town near by.

The nights were broken and memorable. We slept lying on our mattresses, and the gray water slipped by. There were clouds and stars in the sky, and to the east the dark line of shore. We heard the surf all night. When the sheet struck the water there was a line of phosphorescent fire, and new constellations whenever the men bailed the boat. One night it stormed, and I lay under the boom and the reefed sail as deliciously snug as the unfledged. ‘There is no comfort,’ think I, all cozy in my shelter, like the comfort of vagabonds!’ And sleep again to find the wind fallen, the sky washed and tumultous with stars, old Masongo trampling on his passengers and busy with the sail. When the shadow of the sail was plain on the water, that was morning; then the gray of the world paled, and the stars in the sky and the little fitful stars by the boat-side died.
We were three days coming up, and I had forgotten to expect to get anywhere, when I woke to find Mr. C. sitting up beside me in the stern of the boat, shouting out to ‘mind the rocks!’ ‘You’ll be on the rocks!’ shouts Jimmie. It is customary to shout when you make a landing, and I always quake because I forget that it is customary. Lights were on the water’s edge. As a matter of fact we made a good landing, riding in on the curling of surf to the light of the lanterns ashore. The black boys rush out to meet us, get a rope from the bow, hold her steady by this. I sit on the gunwale with my legs over the side, waiting to be picked off; in my eyes the lanterns and the incessant white surf are a dazzle. Presently along comes Masongo, tall and lean and kind. He presses through the surf. His head is about on a level with my knees. When we next ease down a bit I let myself go into his arms and am carried ashore. And so, to bed. Old Masongo — how kind to me he was! Mr. C. teased the men about ‘calling up the wind,’ and they laughed. But once when Mr. C. and I were asleep, I saw Masongo looking for the land breeze and calling softly the old incantation: ‘Viaka, epupu, viaka!’ And of course the wind rose.
Eké! my dears, how far you live from these adventures!

June 6.
Yesterday some Ngoé women, who are much more naïve than the Ngumba, came to the house of Ze to dress, four or live of them just in from the garden, their bright cloths in their hands. ‘Where is your mirror?’ they ask Ze. ‘My mirror? Where is everything I own? My girl Ntolo has taken it to school, with my handkerchief and my piece of soap.’ But she produces a mirror, and there follows one of the most feminine performances you ever saw. There are as many ways of binding your head with a handkerchief as there are hats in a shop. In their bits of loin-cloths the women bound their bandanas, holding the little mirror between their knees as they stood. Such prinking, such laughing! Eyinga the middle-aged, lovesick to the point of death for Se Menge, but since recovered, was found to be adjusting the third handkerchief over the other two. ‘Eyinga, you will kill yourself!’ says Menge. But they all took a hand in the arrangement of this, a woolen one with fringe. It is fine to have a fringe of fringe! This done, it seemed that all was lost — her head was too big for the neck of her dress. ‘It must be undone,’ says Eyinga desperately, and they all laugh. — ‘The perspiration runs down you like a river,’ they tell her. And I say, ‘ She must be got into that dress somehow, and at once.’ She stands, smothered, her arms raised while they tug at her dress. She emerges, red woolen fringe and anxious face. Her coquetry is of a very serious type.

BATANGA, Sunday, May 4.
I have received Father’s letter, with his judgment as to my next winter. I am turning things over in my mind. The idea of leave of absence does not appeal to me, as I don’t see the logic of it. If I am — well, I don’t see when I am likely to return, if I am needed at home; and if I am not needed at home I would stay on here.
To-night, my dears, at sunset, Kamerun mountain and Fernando Po rise out of the sea as blue as plums and as clear as Fujiyama in a print.

May 31.
I sent off my cable yesterday, and am perfectly satisfied that I have done the right thing. You need not worry about my being contented at home.

I am very much comforted by the attitude of the older missionaries. They think that my place is at home if I think so. And you must say very simply to every one, that I have come, since the changes of the last four years, to feel that my place is at home. If you just say those words, neither more nor less, you will speak my truth, and you will find how receptive of a natural truth people in general are. I have no question in my own mind that I am on the right track, and I have no question of my happiness at home.
I mean to take an inland journey during the dry season — nothing extreme, as I have not the strength to undertake an extended one. But a pleasant journey. I shall sail for home in the middle of October, or thereabouts.
[‘Black Sheep’ will be concluded by a postscript in the February issue of the magazine.]