376 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



"find the latch-string outside the door"; to an American 

 who knows the country districts well the expression seems 

 so natural that I had never even realized that it was an 

 Americanism. 



At Bishop Hanlon's Mission, where I lunched with the 

 bishop, there was a friend, Mother Paul, an American; 

 before I left America I had promised that I would surely see 

 her, and look into the work which she, and the sisters associ- 

 ated with her, were doing. It was delightful seeing her; she 

 not merely spoke my language but my neighborhood dia- 

 lect. She informed me that she had just received a mes- 

 sage of good will for me in a letter from two of "the finest" 

 of course I felt at home when in mid-Africa, under the 

 equator, I received in such fashion a message from two 

 of the men who had served under me in the New York 

 police.* She had been teaching her pupils to sing some 

 lines of the "Star-spangled Banner," in English, in my 

 especial honor; and of course had been obliged, in writ- 

 ing it out, to use spelling far more purely phonetic than I 

 had ever dreamed of using. The first lines ran as fol- 

 lows: (Some of our word sounds have no equivalent in 

 Uganda.) 



"O se ka nyu si bai di mo nseli laiti 

 (O say can you see by the morn'sf early light) 



Wati so pulauli wi eli adi twayi laiti silasi giremi" 

 (What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.) 



* For the benefit of those who do not live in the neighborhood of New York I 

 may explain that all good, or typical, New Yorkers invariably speak of their police 

 force as "the finest"; and if any one desires to know what a "good" or "typical" 

 New Yorker is, I shall add, on the authority of either Brander Matthews or the 

 late H. C. Bunner I forget which that when he isn't a Southerner or of Irish 

 or German descent he is usually a man born out West of New England parentage. 



f sic. 



