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

474 THINKING BLACK
with our Gospel of God, the said Gospel made too prepos-
terous and impossible a claim upon him. Hence his blunt
black challenge to the Missionary : " Well, you just sit
down here and live your Gospel for twenty years or so,
and then we will believe you." Thus, for nearly a genera-
tion, did the negro's face set in those obstinate lines of
Christ-rejection so well known to us, and it has taken all
that time for the truth to get home to his hard heart that
all our Gospelling was not the mere effusion of a passing
excitement. This *' pegging away " is what the African
calls "the pertinacity of a fly," the compliment being
equivocal, as most African flies have a sting in them.
Some flies, like some Missionaries, even give " sleeping
sickness "—a curious sort of jag that must be if it makes
you sleep instead of wakening you up. And '' sting " is
the very idea in bush-preaching, for the unblushing sin
forces Evangelist to be as plain as John Bunyan. Hence
that negro obstinacy, and, if you have only pertinacity
enough, the said obstinacy can easily work out at
malignity. Mr. Pecksnifi" has not yet been born in
Central Africa, and, as we have seen, the nude negro has
nude speech : one cheery old gentleman used to exhort
us in the jpros and cons of this attack of ours on the
citadel of the negro soul.
" Remember," said he, "if you
hit the body only on one spot you will soon raise a lump."
This is true enough, for although you can easily laugh and
chat yourselves into the good graces of a negro, yet
remember that is only the nominal surface black man you
have conciliated. Scratch this coloured Russian on the