Love Letters 
sion compound. She was of much service in 
looking after the young people, was really the 
matron of the girls’ department, in fact. She 
was also a thrifty trader and contributed to their 
support. Mary or Osuntala, also took lodgings 
in the girls’ dormitories when she first came, but 
she was still young and comely, and she soon 
had a suitor in a pious Sierra Leone man. She 
was little inclined to marriage and discouraged 
him for many months, but her modest shyness 
only made her lover the more persistent, and one 
day she asked me with downcast eyes, if I 
thought she would act wisely in marrying again. 
I rather encouraged the idea and the union proved 
to be a very happy one. 1 will notice in this 
connection that the relation of our mission station 
in Abeokuta to the civil power was singularly 
unique. In Ejahyay, when a ruffian on one oc¬ 
casion pursued our mission children into the sta¬ 
tion yard, stoning and cursing them, Areh had 
the offender severely whipped by the bale of his 
compound. But in Abeokuta, the government 
was such a strange mixture of patriarchal, mon¬ 
archical and republican that we did not know 
sometimes to whom to apply for protection. In 
each of the numerous chiefdoms was an Ogbonee 
lodge to which everybody but slaves belonged. 
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