As we retraced our steps I questioned
my companion further on this subject.
"How comes it, Bill, that the mothers allow such a dreadful thing to be
done?"
"Allow it? the mothers _do_ it! It seems to me that there's
nothing too fiendish or diabolical for these people to do. Why, in some
of the islands they have an institution called the _Ar?oi_, and
the persons connected with that body are ready for any wickedness that
mortal man can devise. In fact they stick at nothing; and one o' their
customs is to murder their infants the moment they are born. The
mothers agree to it, and the fathers do it. And the mildest ways they
have of murdering them is by sticking them through the body with sharp
splinters of bamboo, strangling them with their thumbs, or burying them
alive and stamping them to death while under the sod."
I felt sick at heart while my companion recited these horrors.
"But it's a curious fact," he continued after a pause, during which we
walked in silence towards the spot where we had left our comrades
--"it's a curious fact, that wherever the missionaries get a footin' all
these things come to an end at once, an' the savages take to doin' each
other good and singin' psalms, just like Methodists."
"God bless the missionaries!" said I, while a feeling of enthusiasm
filled my heart, so that I could speak with difficulty. "God bless and
prosper the missionaries till they get a footing in every island of the
sea!"
"I would say Amen to that prayer, Ralph, if I could," said Bill, in a
deep, sad voice; "but it would be a mere mockery for a man to ask a
blessing for others who dare not ask one for himself.
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