boy at work, is
his breechcloth, and hanging from a ribbon around his knee, the key
to his box. If a boy has no box he generally carries three keys.

In the first-class car were three French officers en route to
Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, and a dog, a sad
mongrel, very dirty, very hungry. On each side of the tiny toy car
were six revolving-chairs, so the four men, not to speak of the dog,
quite filled it. And to our own bulk each added hand-bags, cases of
beer, helmets, gun-cases, cameras, water-bottles, and, as the road
does not supply food of any kind, his chop-box. A chop-box is
anything that holds food, and for food of every kind, for the hours
of feeding, and the verb "to feed," on the West Coast, the only
word, the "lazy" word, is "chop."

The absent-minded young missionary, with Fanny jammed between his
ankles, and looking out miserably upon the world, and two other
young missionaries, travelled second-class.

They were even more crowded together than were we, but not so much
with luggage as with humanity. But as a protest against the high
charges of the railroad the missionaries always travel in the open
car. These three young men were for the first time out of England,
and in any fashion were glad to start on their long journey up the
Congo to Bolobo. To them whatever happened was a joke. It was a joke
even when the colored "wife" of one of the French officers used the
broad shoulders of one of them as a pillow and slept sweetly. She
was a large, good-natured, good-looking mulatto, and at the frequent
stations the French officer ran back to her with "white man's chop,"
a tin of sausages, a pineapple, a bottle of beer. She drank the
beer from the bottle, and with religious tolerance offered it to the
Baptists. They assured her without the least regret that they were
teetotalers. To the other blacks in the open car the sight of a
white man waiting on one of their own people was a thrilling
spectacle. They regarded the woman who could command such services
with respect. It would be interesting to know what they thought of
the white man. At each station the open car disgorged its occupants
to fill with water the beer bottle each carried, and to buy from the
natives kwango, the black man's bread, a flaky, sticky flour that
tastes like boiled chestnuts; and pineapples at a franc for ten. And
such pineapples! Not hard and rubber-like, as we know them at home,
but delicious, juicy, melting in th