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 sentenced to a term of imprisonment with
hard labour, but I remember that several of the jurymen expressed their
astonishment afterwards at hearing so good a defence so pleasingly
expressed by a raw Native youth who had never been to any kind of
school.

On one occasion I had some trouble to make a Native complainant
understand that the evidence upon which he relied was entirely hearsay
and therefore of no avail against the man he wished to charge with a
crime of theft. While talking an elderly Tebele arrived and I put the
matter to him. He listened gravely and when I had finished he turned to
the other and said: