King's Business - 1917-11

THE KING’S BUSINESS

1016

learned that by connecting them up they can have music all along the line. So at night, when the toil of the day is done, the tired people lounge outside their box­ car homes and listen to the music that comes from miles and miles away. It quiets their quarreling, silences their swearing, and makes the whole world seem good and kind. AFR ICA As far as known, the first steamboat ever built in Arica is one built at Muhlenberg Mission, about two years ago. When it arrived at Monrovia, on the trial trip, the sensation was intense. It was made of an old native dug-out, ripped lengthwise through the middle, filling in with plank until they had a flat bottomed boat 40 ft. long 8 ft. wide and 3 ft. deep. An old oil mill furnished round iron for shafting, and a little farm engine, a three horse power Ajax, was placed amidship. Over all we built a light cabin, and the “Sarah Ann” • the first steamer of the Dark Continent, was pronounced finished. When you take into consideration that the whole arrange­ ment was built out of material none of which was intended for the purpose, and dressed down with the rudest of tools, you may form some idea of what a nonde­ script thing it is. It moves along better than you would think, making at least five miles an hour. It groans, and screeches, and wheezes dreadfully all at one time, but that in the eyes of the natives, is a virtue. Therefore She is pronounced by all hands a most decided success. With all these disadvantages, it is a good deal better than riding in a canoe on the rough and treacherous St, Paul River. This home­ made boat will not last long, but by the time it breaks down I have no doubt the new one promised some time ago will come. As long as this one can be used to carry the Gospel, it answers the purpose.

HOME MISSIONS Somewhere along the Southern Pacific Railway, in the desert lands close to the Mexican border, you will find a train that looks like a freight, but is not. It is a passenger, train. The car on the end flies the American flag to show that it is an American school house. The travelling school house is not on Uncle Sam’s books. It is built and maintained by the railway company, and the idea -originated in the heart and brain of Supt. W. H. Whelan, who says: “Wages are not all we owe in this world.” This railroad stretches over a vast territory, a great part of which is prairie primeval, with never a town or ham­ let to which the crews of its construction trains can go at night for food or shelter. The men and their families must live in the box cars, and be shifted as the con­ struction work demands. All but the fore­ man and timekeeper are Mexicans—2200 of them, and they came stfaggling across the border in little bands seeking work, and brought absolutely nothing with thenj but their wives and children and dogs. All were so hungry they had to be fed for several days before the men were able to go to work. After all the kindness shown them it is no wonder they clamor to “speak Americana” and be Americans. A white painted hospital car is installed, with its physician in charge, equipped with cots for the sick, baths for everybody, and medical advice as free to them as the winds of the desert. The people respond to this kind­ ness, for in the real Mexican—where the strain of the Yaqui Indian is missing—is always a vague out-reaching for better things than he has known. The experiment of the school car is working so well that they now have three more school cars ready for the road. The new invention, the tele- graphone, has been installed along this rail­ way and the construction crews have

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