On Keeping School/^ 
THE missionary in his time is called upon to 
play many parts. He has to build, to farm, 
to doctor, to act as umpire in very strange circum- 
stances, and above all else he has to teach and 
preach. Preaching is what he goes out to do, but 
as soon as he gets there almost, he feels he must 
TEACH also. All missionaries think alike about 
this. James Chalmers of New Guinea — the man 
who loved to travel and open new districts in the 
name of the Lord Jesus — was so sure of the neces- 
sity of keeping school that even he used to take a 
hand at it himself. Gathering a few tiny tots about 
him he would take the alphabet card and teach ! 
Visit any of our mission stations in Nigeria, Aliwal 
North, or South Central Africa, and you will find 
humble buildings of mud and wattle at every out- 
post which serve as mission schools. These — 
humble though they be — are a great advance on 
what had to serve at the beginning of things. 
When I began in Nigeria we used the ordinary 
church forms as desks, and a ^'wobbly'* table — 
which served as a pulpit on Sundays — as a superior 
writing desk for the two or three scholars who were 
in advance of the rest. For a blackboard I used 
the side of a box, until the chalk defied the duster 
and elbow grease, and then I had to get a fresh 
one. How do you think we turned ordinary benches 
into desks? It was quite easy. The boys and girls 
