ance in the way I
do from anyone. I think the Great Spirit gave to me the gift of dancing,
the power came down on me when I was a child. I have never seen
Europeans or Arabs dancing. I have never seen an Arab dancing woman. I
dance my way because the Spirit gave it to me to do so."

I then asked her what it was that made her well. Was it the dancing or
the profuse sweating which I had noticed? "The Spirit," she said, "made
me well, he gave me to dance, the dancing made we sweat thereby cooling
my body, and that made me well, it brought my heart back to its right
place."

This clear expression of concatenated thought from a Native woman who
had had no missionary tuition or other education of the Western kind
shows to my mind sound reasoning capacity no less developed than that
met with in Europeans generally.

Turning over my notes I select, at random, a few more instances to
illustrate my argument.

A Tebele youth of about twenty years of age, smooth-limbed and good
looking, was charged some years ago in the Rhodesian High Court with the
crime of abducting two young Native girls for his own immoral purposes.
I made a note of the chief part of his speech in his own defence at the
time. This is what he said:

"I have the gift of singing and dancing, my father had it, and his
father before him. When I sing and dance people forget their sorrows,
and when I leave a kraal, singing as I go, the people follow me for the
joy of my song, so that sometimes I have to drive them away. Now it is
easy to drive away old men and women, but who can drive away two pretty
girls like these that have been made to speak against me to-day? When I
sang and danced at their kraal their father gave me a goat because I had
made his heart white and glad, and his daughters followed me and joined
in the play--and I am young! When I become old and can no longer sing
and dance the girls will not follow me. Why should I not be merry while
I may? I never said a word to these girls, they followed me, I did not
call them. But now, if the white men who listen to my words feel
doubtful about what I say, then I would ask the judge to allow me to
show them here and now how I can dance and sing, and if, after hearing
and seeing me do so, they still think I am to blame, then I have no more
to say; I shall go to gaol with a broken heart, and silent."

The offer made by this African Apollo, I need not say, was not accepted,
and he was found guilty and senten