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Show "IN DARKEST AFRICA." Caroline Kirkland, in her book on "Some African Afri-can Highways," says of night in the Dark Continent Conti-nent : "There is nothing so black as an African night and I think that it is because the earth, being a deep red. offers no reflection to the faint starlight such as we get in other lands. Instead, it swallows up what slight glow there may be, and gives to the darkness a dim, velvety quality not to be found anywhere any-where else. Overhead the stars glow more brilliantly than in northern latitudes, but they seem "to cast no light, and the night is palpable, suffocating, appalling appal-ling and filled wi th a nameless. horror which is quite indescribable." The cruelties that have been inflicted and suffered suf-fered in that land through the unnumbered centuries centur-ies have made their impress upon Nature herself.. It forced back civilized man for ages. In other wild countries he has obtained a foothold and forced his way inland; but while nations arose and flourished, and at last declined and died, that inner darker con tinent had at most but a tnnge ot settlements around its shores. The mighty interior was given up to its savageries; something held the explorer back. It was that way through the centuries, while Egypt arose and flourished, and finally declined until un-til all her glory had nothing remaining to tell of her former power but her ruins. The land-hungry nations recoiled before seeking to penetrate those African depths. new world was discovered and all its mysteries uncovered before Africa finally was searched out and its horrors revealed. Now this writer that is quoted above tells of its "palpable "palpa-ble darkness," and cannot explain lucidly the reason. rea-son. We think it is because the laud and its people never knew either charity or mercy. They have been as cruel as their own fierce beasts from the first, for how the description of those African nights fits the character and presence of the man who has neither charity nor mercy in his soul. We have all seen now and then such a man. Whatever light there may be in him is never reflected. Chil-I Chil-I dren and domestic animals, by a live instinct, shrink away from him. Those near him are uncomfortable and distrust him; he walks unloved through life; he is in the world's way always even the stars that shine down upon him can make no impression upon him by their rays. After all, the light of the world is love, and above all other graces' is charity. May be Africa was reserved until the best in the known world should be worn out ; possibly the races that have ruled the world so long are by and by to be displaced; possibly a new light is to be kindled kin-dled in the continent which has always been dark and a new civilization is to be born there; but if it is. it will be when Mercy builds a throne there and brings with her the two ministers Love and Charity. Char-ity. Goodwin's Weekly. |