w
language to writing, but I cannot perform impossibilities. I
don't think it quite fair for the Churches to expect their
messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the
husks that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say
so to any one but yourself."

"I cannot perform impossibilities," said Livingstone; but few men could
come so near doing it. His activity of mind and body at this outskirt of
civilization was wonderful. A Jack-of-all-trades, he is building houses
and schools, cultivating gardens, scheming in every manner of way how to
get water, which in the remarkable drought of the season becomes scarcer
and scarcer; as a missionary he is holding meetings every other night,
preaching on Sundays, and taking such other opportunities as he can find
to gain the people to Christ; as a medical man he is dealing with the
more difficult cases of disease, those which baffle the native doctors;
as a man of science he is taking observations, collecting specimens,
thinking out geographical, geological, meteorological, and other
problems bearing on the structure and condition of the continent; as a
missionary statesman he is planning how the actual force might be
disposed of to most advantage, and is looking round in this direction
and in that, over hundreds of miles, for openings for native agents; and
to promote these objects he is writing long letters to the Directors, to
the _Missionary Chronicle_ to the _British Banner_, to private friends,
to any one likely to take an interest in his plans.

But this does not exhaust his labors. He is deeply interested in
philological studies, and is writing on the Sichuana language:

"I have been hatching a grammar of the Sichuana language," he
writes to Mr. Watt. "It is different in structure from any
other language, except the ancient Egyptian. Most of the
changes are effected by means of prefixes or affixes, the
radical remaining unchanged. Attempts have been made to form
grammars, but all have gone on the principle of establishing
a resemblance between Sichuana, Latin, and Greek; mine is on
the principle of analysing the language without reference to
any others. Grammatical terms are only used when I cannot
express my meaning in any other way. The analysis renders the
whole language very simple, and I believe the principle
elicited extends to most of the languages between this and