Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

A PAGE OF HISTORY 417
whole African puzzle. For granted you battle with and
win a feeble flower from the silly soil, where is the
perfume ? And precisely as you sniff in vain for the old
whiff of the mignonette, even so with the emigrant English-
man. He too loses his bloom and fragrance, and Africa
soon robs him of his genial smile. But he that hath
ears to hear can get a thousand such sermons all over
Africa, and every day. For instance, learn a parable of
the fig tree. Glance at those Mission doors, a pioneer
effort in carpentry. The good fellow made a dive into
the adjoining jungle, and after felling a fig tree he
laboriously ripped the planks for his first doors and
tables. The which is a perfect parable. For that wood
was as green as the Missionary who cut it, and after a
few months those tightly fitting boards, so full of sap,
shrank into yawning cracks, a sorrow and an eyesore.
How like the fresh young Missionary, the first year how
neat and trig ; the second, how warped and shrunken !
For as long as sap is sap and sun is sun, the latter will
soon suck up the former, and the Mission door will be
like the Missionary who made it. Learn, therefore, a
parable of that fig tree. When its branch is yet young
and tender, and shooteth forth its leaves, then ye know
that it is not the time to make doors and tables ! Their
very word for "leaves" has a Biblical ring in it. It
means " the tellers," the idea being that they mark the
change of seasons, and all appeal to the leaves, i.e. " the
tellers," as proof positive that the season has changed.
Thus the phrase, "When ye see the leaves then ye