than Mary herself, possessing no brains, but for faithfulness,
truthfulness, honesty, and industry without a peer. She hated to dress
or to leave the kitchen, but she washed, baked, and did the housework
without assistance, and was kind to the children. These constituted
her inner circle, but she was always taking in and caring for derelict
children. At this time there were several in the house or yard. Two
were twins five months old, whom she had found lying on the ground
discarded and forlorn, and who had developed into beautiful children.
Their father was a drunken parasite, with a number of wives, whom he
battered and beat in turn. Another castaway came to her in a wretched
state. The father had stolen a dog, and the mother had helped him to
eat it. The owner threw down a native charm at their door, and the
woman sickened and died, and as all believed that the medicine had
killed her no one would touch the child. The woman's mistress was a
daughter of old King Eyo, and a friend of Mary, and she sent the
infant, dirty and starved, to the Mission House with her compliments.
Mary washed and fed it and nursed it back to decent life, but on
sending to the mistress a request that one of the slave women might
care for it, she got the reply, "Let it die." She let it live.

In the mornings, while busy with her household, there were perpetual
interruptions. Sick folk came to have their ailments diagnosed and
prescribed for. Some of the diseases she attended to were of the most
loathsome type, but that made no difference in her compassionate care.
Hungry people came to her to be fed, those in trouble visited her to
obtain advice and help, disputes were referred to her to be settled.
When all these cases had been dealt with she would go her round of the
yards, the inmates of which had come to look upon her as a mother. She
would sit down and chat with them and discuss their homes, children,
marketing, illness, or whatever subject interested them, sometimes