"I think, though, the socks were most popular. All the fighting-men
went for them the first thing. They filled them with sand and used
them as boomerangs and war-clubs. I learned that they were so much
pleased with the efficiency of those socks that they made a raid on a
neighboring tribe on purpose to try them; and they say they knocked
about eighty women and children on the head before they came home.
They asked me if I wouldn't speak to you and get you to send out a few
barrels more, and to make them a little stronger, so's they'd last
longer; and I said I would.

"This society's doing a power of good to those heathen, and I've no
doubt if you keep right along with the work you will inaugurate a
general war all over the continent of Africa and give everybody an
idol of his own. All they want is enough socks and trousers. I'll take
them when I go out again."

Then the Dorcas passed a resolution declaring that it would, perhaps,
be better to let the heathen go naked and give the clothes to the poor
at home. Maybe that is the better way.




CHAPTER IX.

_JUDGE TWIDDLER'S COW_.


For several months previous to last summer Judge Twiddler's family