sent to Zanzibar; but I have got no
letters for years, save some, three years old, at Ujiji. I have an
intense and sore longing to finish and retire, and trust that the
Almighty may permit me to go home."

In one of his letters to Agnes from Manyuema he quotes some words from a
letter of hers that he ever after cherished as a most
refreshing cordial:

"I commit myself to the Almighty Disposer of events, and if I fall, will
do so doing my duty, like one of his stout-hearted servants. I am
delighted to hear you say that, much as you wish me home, you would
rather hear of my finishing my work to my own satisfaction than come
merely to gratify you. That is a noble sentence, and I felt all along
sure that all my friends would wish me to make a complete work of it,
and in that wish, in spite of every difficulty, I cordially joined. I
hope to present to my young countrymen an example of manly perseverance.
I shall not hide from you that I am made by it very old and shaky, my
cheeks fallen in, space round the eyes ditto; mouth almost toothless,--a
few teeth that remain, out of their line, so that a smile is that of a
he-hippopotamus,--a dreadful old fogie, and you must tell Sir Roderick
that it is an utter impossibility for me to appear in public till I get
new teeth, and even then the less I am seen the better."

Another letter to Agnes from Manyuema gives a curious account of the
young soko or gorilla a chief had lately presented to him:

"She sits crouching eighteen inches high, and is the most
intelligent and least mischievous of all the monkeys I have
seen. She holds out her hand to be lifted and carried, and if
refused makes her face as in a bitter human weeping, and
wrings her hands quite humanly, sometimes adding a foot or
third hand to make the appeal more touching.... She knew me
at once as a friend, and when plagued by any one always
placed her back to me for safety, came and sat down on my
mat, decently made a nest of grass and leaves, and covered
herself with the mat to sleep. I cannot take her with me,
though I fear that she will die before I return, from people
plaguing her. Her fine long black hair was beautiful when
tended by her mother, who was killed. I am mobbed enough
alone; two sokos--she and I--would not have got breath.

"I have to submit to be a gazing-stock. I don't altogether
relish it, here or elsewhere, but try to