sometimes result from giving increased facilities for lectures and music on Sundays would be more than counterbalanced by the increase of paid, and practically involuntary, Sunday labour, and by the encouragement given to make pecuniary profit under the guise of entertainments for 'the public good.""

For upwards of two centuries, therefore, the united wisdom of the nation has been occupied in settling this

grave question; and it still remains unsettled. The law as to Sunday Observance cannot even now be considered to rest on a sure foundation. To give one instance only, it is still doubtful whether the Sunday concerts at the Albert Hall, where music of an elevating, though may be of a secular, character is performed, do not come within the prohibition contained in the Lord's Day Act of 1781.

35

SHE was a mongrel, an unmitigated mongrel, I was about to write, but am restrained by the recollection that she was one quarter good fox-terrier. You would not have thought it to look at her. Except for her tail (which her owner had considerately docked in infancy, to impart as much as he could of a false air of breeding), she might have been the veriest garu, or native cur, who sneaked hungrily about the empty porridge-pots in a Mang'anja village.

I am not sufficiently expert in the technicalities of canine phraseology to describe Nell's appearance correctly. All I know is, that she was white, with two liver-coloured patches on her head and face, and that she had enormous flapping ears which generally stood erect. I have known her scared almost into fits (and well she might be) by the shadow of these same ears projected on the wall by my bedroom candle. As for her moral character, it may be summed up in a sentence; she had a warm heart, no conscience, not a particle of courage, and not the remotest vestige of manners.

Her first owner was an English coffee-planter, developing the resources of the Dark Continent in a retired spot, where, except for the Angoni, he might almost as well have been Robinson Crusoe. Fortunately for himself, he had a taste for reading, a great love of animals, and the knack of making friends with the natives. When he moved about out of doors, he usually appeared encompassed with a cloud of dogs; and when he visited his cattle kraal, his two gray monkeys would swing themselves down from

the great wild fig-tree in whose branches they had fixed their abode, and swarm up him to take sweet potatoes out of his pockets.

Jones and I were trying British Central Africa together. I will not enter into details (this being not our biography, but Nell's,) further than to say that our place was a few miles away from that of the aforesaid planter, whom I will call, as did his Angoni neighbours, Chimfuti, or the Big Gun. Jones had a black-andwhite fox-terrier called Nix, a most jolly little dog. Except for the ticks taking their share of him, the climate agreed with him wonderfully well, and he never lost the keen edge of his sporting instincts. But then Jones used to talk to him, and make a companion of him; and there were always plenty of rats, so that he did not get bored, and Jones slept of nights without finding the brutes rioting over him as he lay in bed.

I had no dog, and Chimfuti offered me Nell. She was, I suppose, seven or eight months old, and as unspeakably foolish as only a half-grown puppy can be. I received her with effusive gratitude, because, just then, I was in a mood to welcome any sort of a dog; and, besides, I was full of grand theories about the influence of kindness and judicious training on the lowest mongrel in creation. If the average garu was a sorry spectacle, it was only because he was starved and bullied. Treat him kindly, feed him decently, let him see that you cared for him personally, and valued his friendship, and you would in time. have a faithful dependant, who, given the opportunity, would be quite ready

to emulate the classic example of Gelert or the hound Argus. I used to say all this to Jones sometimes, as we sat on the verandah smoking after dinner, and watched the sun setting behind the three peaks of Mvai; but he would only give a little laugh and make no further comment.

The subject is a painful one. Suffice it to say that I was compelled to modify my opinions before I had done. Not that she was anything but affectionate, in a way; she would have been warmly attached, I think, to any one who fed her regularly, and I always did this myself. But it is not pleasant to have your dog flinging its whole bulk upon you, and copiously licking your face every time you take your ease in a basket-chair. And she was not one who took hints readily. The only way to smoke or read in peace was either to shut her out or tie her up. If the former, she invariably bounced back through a window, for it was impossible to keep the house hermetically sealed in that climate; if the latter, she wailed dismally, till Jones said he could not and would not bear it, and asked me why I did not bring her up better.

Then she took to sleeping on my bed, by day or night and totally regardless of previous occupancy. It was a narrow folding stretcher, with scarcely room for more than one; consequently, it often happened that I awoke in the night, and found myself balanced on the outer verge, with Nell curled up in the middle of the mattress. against the small of my back. Or I would find her lying on my feet, and she was no light weight; and, as for kicking her off, it was next door to an impossibility. She would lie perfectly still, an inert but elastic mass, so that your feet, when you assayed to kick, just slid under her and left her where she was. There was nothing for it but to get up and

haul her down, and tie her up, and go to sleep as best one could, in spite of her yelping and yowling, only too thankful if she did not awaken Nix, and cause Jones to shout from his chamber: "Why can't you keep that brute-beast of yours quiet?"

But Nell,-Jones thought I was not strict enough with her (Nix, of course, being a model of correct nurture), so I took to thrashing her whenever I caught her on my bed in the daytime. I kept a bango cane handy in the corner of the room; she made a great noise when it was applied, but I don't know that it hurt her much. For a bango, let me tell you, is by no means the same thing as a bamboo, and, if not carefully selected, is apt to fly to pieces in the hand when vigorously used. However, between that and the tying-up at night, she began to realise that the bed was a forbidden place; and this is where her abominable lack of conscience comes in.

She learned to retire of her own accord to the basket appointed for her, and to stay there without compulsion till I was asleep, when she would quietly get up, and edge me out of bed as before described. Also she would sleep on that bed in the day-time, whenever she got the chance. If I came in, and said, sharply, "Nell!" she would jump down in a tremendous hurry, only to slip back the moment I was out of sight. I should have respected her more if there had been more method and capability in her transgressions; but she was so inanely short-sighted. would barely give me time to get out of the room before repeating the

offence.

She

We had been warned always to keep our dogs indoors at night, in view of the risks so graphically indicated by that worthy Scot who, being one of a cheerful party in a

lamp-lit and curtained room at the Mission, heard a scuffle and howl on the verandah, followed by an ominous stillness, and solemnly remarked: "Man, the dowg's awa' wi' a leopard!" Is it not recorded in the traditions of British Central Africa? But I am bound to say that no special precautions were needed in Nell's case. Nothing would induce her to put her nose outside the door after dark, if she knew it.

Perhaps it was another evidence of a nervous temperament that she had a cat-like horror of water, which, indeed, suggested a more efficacious chastisement than the cane. Before long she would fly in terror at the mere sight of a jug. She used to wash her face with her fore-paws, too, which I never saw any other dog doing. It may be the case that native dogs are partly descended from cats; the ancients told us we were always to expect something new from Africa.

But, alas, there were yet other sins which called aloud for the intervention of the cane and the water-jug. There would be a sound of tumult outside, causing us to issue forth and confront the spectacle of half-a-dozen small boys in shirts and calico kilts, the foremost whereof, with the air of an Accusing Angel, was dragging the offending Nell along by the collar. "Garu wako a na ba !" said he. " Thy dog has been stealing!" The grammar tells us that it is more respectful to say, “garu wanu (your dog)"; whence I conclude that either the little wretches did not know their own language so well as the missionary who wrote the said grammar, or they thought no respect could be due to the owner of a dog like that. Of course I had to thrash her, and compensate the boy whose fowl or porridge she had stolen, and who commonly held out a rescued leg of the corpus delicti, or the plate which had con

tained it, in front of her nose while she was undergoing punishment. made noise enough for half-a-dozen dogs when this sort of thing happened; and thus, possibly, escaped a good deal.

Sometimes, too, our capitao, an educated boy from the Mission, came. up to report that he had suffered loss, of his dinner, or of eggs from under a sitting hen in his private apartment, or what not. There was a sternness in Zedekiah's eye on these occasions, and a lofty disapproval in his manner, which were not easy to face; and Jones, who could pulverise Zedekiah with a look when he liked, never would help me out, but sat by, smoking with stony impassiveness. It always made me sensible that the contempt Jones habitually felt for Nell, which he never took any pains to disguise, was now being extended to me. And you have no idea to what an abject being that consciousness reduced me.

are not

One comfort was that Nyell, as the boys usually called her, was not sporting enough to worry live fowls, or Jones would certainly have insisted on a halter for her straightway. Nix did, occasionally, but we treating of Nix just now. Once, when I was at Pembereka's kraal, negotiating for supplies of maize flour and beans, Nell made my heart leap into my mouth by slaying a diminutive and very skinny chicken. But old Pembereka was not Zedekiah, and he accepted my apologies most goodnaturedly. And I really think that was Nell's solitary exploit in the way of slaughter.

While on the subject of sport, I must not omit to mention the sole occasion on which Nell earned for herself unalloyed praise. It was rather a mysterious occurrence, and I don't quite know, even yet, how to explain it. I used to collect beetles,