t speed run upon
it and turn a somersault, lighting on their feet. A string of them
together will play "leap frog," and hide-and-seek is great sport with
them. In all these amusements they keep up a song.

There is one thing you will certainly see them doing, both boys and
girls, and that is beating their clenched fists into the hard clay just
as hard as they can drive. A year later you will see them driving their
knuckles against a log or a tree. In this way they become hardened and
are used as a weapon in fights when they are grown. And, too, they can
butt like a goat, so in their family fights they not only use their
fists but their heads.

I spent hours at King Lukenga's and other villages playing with the
little folks and trying to find out what they were thinking about. They
had a name for the sun and moon, names for very brilliant and prominent
stars and ordinary ones. The sun was the father of the heavens, the moon
was his wife, and the stars were their children. The sun after going
down was paddled around in a very large canoe on the great water by men
who were more than human and started in the skies again. They knew that
a year was divided into two general seasons, the rainy (eight moons),
the dry (four moons); though even in the rainy season it doesn't rain
every day and very seldom all day at any time; and in the dry season
there is an occasional refreshing shower.

They knew the names of all the lakes, rivers and small streams. Roots
that were good for medicine or to eat they knew. Flowers and ferns were
called by name. The names of all the many varieties of trees, birds and
animals they knew.

I was surprised to know from Maxamalinge, the king's son, that every
month the king had all the little children of the town before him and he
in turn would talk to them, as a great and good father to his own
children.

The king would have his servants give to each boy and girl a handful of
peanuts. When they were out of the king's quarters there was many a
scrap over these peanuts.

I grew very fond of Bakuba and it was reciprocated. They were the finest
looking race I had seen in Africa, dignified, graceful, courageous,
honest, with an open, smiling countenance and really hospitable. Their
knowledge of weaving, embroidering, wood carving and smelting was the
highest in equatorial Africa.

PILLARS OF THE STATE

WILLIAM C. JASON

Young people are the life-blood of the nation, the pillars of the st