his lips got all scabbed and
broken. If he mentions such things to Dr. Bennett or other friend, it is
either in the way of illustrating some medical point or to explain how
he had never found time to take the latitude of his station till he was
stopped working by one of these accidents. At best it was weary work.
"Two days ago," he writes to his sister Janet (5th July, 1848), "we
entered our new house. What a mercy to be in a house again! A year in a
little hut through which the wind blew our candles into glorious icicles
(as a poet would say) by night, and in which crowds of flies continually
settled on the eyes of our poor little brats by day, makes us value our
present castle. Oh, Janet, know thou, if thou art given to building
castles in the air, that that is easy work to erecting cottages on the
ground." He could not quite forget that it was unfair treatment that had
driven him from Mabotsa, and involved him in these labors. "I often
think," he writes to Dr. Bennett, "I have forgiven, as I hope to be
forgiven; but the remembrance of slander often comes boiling up,
although I hate to think of it. You must remember me in your prayers,
that more of the spirit of Christ may be imparted to me. All my plans of
mental culture have been broken through by manual labor. I shall soon,
however, be obliged to give my son and daughter a jog along the path to
learning.... Your family increases, very fast, and I fear we follow in
your wake. I cannot realize the idea of your sitting with four around
you, and I can scarcely believe myself to be so far advanced as to be
the father of two."

Livingstone never expected the work of real Christianity to advance
rapidly among the Bakwains. They were a slow people and took long to
move. But it was not his desire to have a large church of nominal
adherents. "Nothing," he writes, "will induce me to form an impure
church. Fifty added to the church sounds fine at home, but if only five
of these are genuine, what will it profit in the Great Day? I have felt
more than ever lately that the great object of our exertions ought to be
conversion." There was no subject on which Livingstone had stronger
feelings than on purity of communion. For two whole years he allowed no
dispensation of the Lord's Supper, because he did not deem the
professing Christians to be living consistently. Here was a crowning
proof of his hatred of all sham and false pretense, and his intense love
of solid, thorough, finishe