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

OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 57
than working by day. For to Mr. Negro a dream is an
avant-courier from to-morrow, a whisper out of eternity
for the guidance of men. Farther East I came across
a proof of this. Coming out of the grass, I met a band
of solemn-looking men with a curious old-world look in
their faces. Wonder of wonders, they were a "dream
embassy," said they ; had travelled a long way and were
afoot on a kind of Missionary journey from one great
chief to another, his friend and faithful ally of years.
A " dream embassy," mark you, God having spoken to
their chief in a great dream ; and the solemnity of it all
had so sunk into the monarch's soul that he sent off these
Missionaries of his dream to warn his dear friend, a
brother-king, of the ways of God with man. So serious
a thing is this dream-telling that they have coined a
special verb (Lotolwela), '* to expound a dream." Not in
the temper of mere expediency did I listen to their sacred
story, the negro tete-a-tete with the Infinite, men on the
march for many miles, their theme, God ! God ! God
Picture me there a dazed Missionary listening to these
dream-tellers — listening and wondering, listening and
w^ondering—as with uplifted hands they point skywards
and paint it all so vividly. Telling me of the stately
goings of God in their far-away marsh ; how that He
challenged their king as to his dignity ; how that the
king responded with his long array of titles ;
and how that
the more he vaunted before God the less did his strength
become. Yet again and again did God so ask him who
he was, and just so often did their king make this foolish
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