re more than willing to bring all
their wares to the house if they had any prospects of a sale. I have
had as many as thirty natives troop into the house at one time. They
finally became so obnoxious that I forbade them coming at all.

The silence of these crowds was noticeable. They were keenly alive
to business and did not laugh and joke or even talk in reasonable
measure. As a race they are solemn even in their looks, and no wonder,
such is their degradation, misery, and despair. They have so little
sympathy and care for each other, so little comfort, and so neglected
and hopeless, so sunken beneath the so-called better class that when
a little mission gospel was started one could hardly refrain from
tears to see the joy that they had in accepting the free gospel. It
was no trouble for them to walk thirty or forty miles to get what
they called cheap religion. They were outcasts from society and too
poor to pay the tithes that were imposed upon them by the priests in
their various parishes, for no matter how small a village was there
was the very elegant cathedral in the center of the town which only
the rich and those who were able to pay were entitled to enter.

The poor blind people wandered from village to village in groups
of two to twenty. Quite a number of the moderately insane would go
about begging, too, but the worst were chained to trees or put in
stocks and their food thrown at them. Even the dumb brutes were not
so poorly cared for.

The houses of the rich, while not cleanly and not well furnished,
always have one large room in which stands a ring of chairs with a
rug in the center of the floor and a cuspidor by each seat. You are
ushered in and seated in one of these low square chairs, usually cane
seated. After the courtesies of the day and the hostess's comments on
the fineness of your clothing, refreshments are brought in,--cigars,
cigarettes, wine, cake, and preserved cocoanut. Sometimes American
beer is added as possibly more acceptable than the wine.

The citizens of Jaro seemed to be friendly, they often invited me
to their festivities; committees would wait upon me, presenting me
sometimes invitations engraved upon silver with every appearance of
cordiality in expression and manner. They could not understand why
I would not accept; I would explain, that first, I had no desire;
second, I thought it poor policy to do so when our soldiers were
obliged to fight their soldiers, and they were furni