FIRST YEARS IN SOUTH AFRICA. 25 



missionary centres, and while kept " kraalled " 

 within institutional limits they look very like the 

 real article, but once outside the sacred limits the 

 veneer is found to be very thin, and the missionary 

 product compares unfavourably with his more 

 simple heathen brethren in their normal state. 

 Exceptions there are no doubt, but exceptional 

 excellence on the lines I am treating of is but 

 rarely worth its cost price, and does not much 

 influence the general quality of the output. 



The reading of the social barometer (1894) indi- 

 cates approximate perils, the advent of which will 

 probably lower values all round in England, and 

 gradually convert the possession of riches into that 

 of competence, and poverty will mean a graduated 

 scale of pauperism, arising in some measure from 

 what we call natural causes, but accentuated to an 

 acute degree by the short-sighted and hysterical 

 legislation of these modern days. Far from being 

 in a position to throw away money to pay for the 

 assumed spiritual necessities of African races, every 

 available fraction of it will be less than enough 

 to provide for the bodily necessities of an excessive 

 population mainly owing its origin to an artificially 

 stimulated system of manufactures and commerce, 



