CHA.V. IV. RIGOROUS DISCIPLINE. 85 
among the ranks of the half-hidden children at the 
back. 
" Who was it laughed ?" repeated he, seeking to 
find the culprit. But the gay joker could not summon 
courage to acknowledge his crime ; and so E Kai 
treated the assemblage to a long sermon on the sin of 
laughing. He had perfectly by rote the greater part 
of the New Testament ; and quoted from it in order 
to support almost everything that he asserted. " A 
" man that hath looked on a woman," said he, *' has 
" already committed adultery in his h«art : so he that 
" laugheth, hath already stolen ; for the thief laughs to 
** your face while he steals your property. Laugh ye 
** not ! for it is the way to sin." 
Such was the intense religious enthusiasm of this 
extraordinary man ; and such the extravagance of speech 
and doctrine to which he was carried by it. Bene- 
volent and high-minded, of a character to lead other 
men, endowed with much firmness and kindness of 
heart, and even wise on many points, E Kai had early 
embraced the new doctrine with fervour, and had ap- 
pointed to himself the task of leading all his tribe in 
the way that they should go. He reminded me of 
some old patriarch of the Cameronians by his rigorous 
discipline and intensity of purpose ; and, though I 
thought his doctrine carried out in practice to much too 
saddening a degree for such merry men as his followers, 
I could not refuse him my high admiration for the ad- 
mirable success of his plans, for his great consistency, 
and for the having inculcated a very unusual observance 
of the moral virtues as well as the mere forms of the 
Christian religion among his flock. The Pipiriki 
people were certainly the best-behaved natives whom I 
had yet seen under the new regime. Though under 
these severe restrictions while in the village, E Kai 
