Part 2

"Go on, go on," the man called to his driver. "I'll follow later. Never in all my life have I heard such strange things as this book tells."

The next morning the colporteurs were up at three o'clock. The moon lighted their way as they rode. They stopped at a house for breakfast, and Dr. Tucker took out a Bible and read from it to their host.

"No, no, don't stop!" said the man, when Dr. Tucker started to help load the mules. "Read more. Let the others load the animals while I call my neighbors, that you may read to them, too, and tell them what these things mean, for they are new and strange to us."

Every day they met people who asked, "Where are you going, and what is this new book you carry with you?"

"How can these things be?" said one man. "Is it true that so long as two thousand years ago such wonderful things happened and today I hear of them for the first time and even yet my friends have not heard? You are slow about giving the Bible to my people!"

Now Dr. Tucker had thought he was giving the Bible to the people of Brazil just as fast as he could, but he redoubled his efforts. He sent out still more colporteurs. They gathered the people in the public squares of the cities and read and preached to them, and the people listened gladly. Sometimes the colporteurs started out with sacks filled with Bibles and came back with their sacks full of the images the people had been worshiping and had cast away when they read, "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Dr. Tucker has given more than a million Bibles to Brazil. He presented a Bible to President Prudenti Moraes on his inauguration day. He has found many ways of giving the spirit of the Bible in addition to putting the book into the hands of the people. He does not wish anyone to think that this is a magical book, and that it is enough merely to have it.

When he took Bibles to the sick boatmen down in their poor little mud huts by the river-side, he found they had no one to care for them properly,—there are many thousands of sailors coming into the port of Rio every year,—so Dr. Tucker became the "seamen's friend." He rented a house and made it a Seamen's Home. In one year more than ten thousand sailors came to his Home. Most of them were glad to pay for their meals and beds, but he did not turn any away if they were ill or had no money. There were free beds and free meals for those who needed help, and doctors to care for those who were sick, and employment found for those who were out of work.

While he was preaching in the slums of Rio he found many people who were poor and sick, as there are in all great cities. He went to a young Brazilian doctor and asked him to visit the homes of the poor people in the slums.

The young doctor came back and said, "Why, Dr. Tucker, it is almost enough to make anyone ill just to go into these homes and see how the people live. There are so many dark rooms and so little sunlight, and the houses are very dirty. In almost every home someone is sick." Dr. Tucker remembered how the multitudes came to Jesus and were healed, and so he thought one of the best ways to give more of the Bible to the people was to help those who were sick.

He had stereopticon pictures made which showed how tuberculosis might be prevented. Then he went to the United States Ambassador and to the mayor of Rio and to the president of the Board of Health and to other great men who could help him and told them he was going to give a lecture and wanted them to come and sit on the platform. He sent cards out all over the city telling how many people had tuberculosis and what they should do to be cured and inviting people to his meeting.

Those who came were so much interested in the pictures, that the city officials arranged for him to show them to the children in the public schools. Then they had him talk to the people who gathered in the public squares of the city. The government gave him money to fight tuberculosis, and he started a hospital where sick people without money could be treated and where they could hear and read about Jesus the Great Physician.

Next he started a school for poor children. The children wanted to come to school, and Dr. Tucker was very happy until he saw how strangely they behaved.

"What can be the matter with them?" he asked. "They sit with their hands folded. They don't want to study or even to play. Their eyes are dull."

He asked the children questions and visited their homes to find out why they did not want to study or to jump about and play.

"No wonder my school children sit with their hands folded," he said when he came back. "They are half starved. Some of them have nothing but a cup of coffee and a pickle to eat all day."

He remembered how Jesus had fed those who were hungry, so every day he provided a lunch of whole wheat mush with milk and sugar. Soon the hollow cheeks of the children began to get round and rosy, their eyes began to shine, and they wanted to run and jump and play.

"I wish we could feed all the hungry children in Rio," said Dr. Tucker one day. He knew he could never get them all in his little school, but he thought of another plan—he started a cooking school to teach the mothers to cook good meals at home. He told the gas company about his plan, and they gave him the stoves he needed. The mothers came with their children, and while the children learned reading and writing and arithmetic, the mothers learned how to prepare food that was better for children than coffee and pickles. Dr. Tucker had found another way to give the Bible to Brazil.

One day he said, "The Bible tells us to clothe the naked, but how can we ever get clothes enough for all of the poor people of Brazil!"

Presently he walked into the office of a sewing machine company and told the manager about his plan to clothe the naked.

"That would be fine!" the manager said. "Of course the only way to clothe all the poor people is to teach them how to make their own clothes."

He sent sewing machines to Dr. Tucker's school, and soon the mothers were learning to sew. Dr. Tucker had found still another way to give the Bible to Brazil.

Now his school children were well and happy. Their cheeks were round and rosy, for they had a lunch at school and their mothers gave them good food at home. Their clothes were neat and clean, their eyes were bright and shining, and they were ready to study and play. But where should they play? There was no trouble about a place to study. They could study at school or at home, but when they wanted to play there was no place at all. Rio is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and many of the people are very wealthy and live in beautiful homes, but Dr. Tucker's poor little children in the slums lived in houses that were built close together right on the street.

There was a very beautiful park, with lovely green grass, but the superintendent of parks was very proud of his green grass and had a fence of iron rails around it with a sign, "Keep off the grass" wherever a child could get in.

Every time Dr. Tucker saw that park, his eyes looked like the eyes of his school children when they were hungry. But one day as he went through the park, his eyes began to twinkle. He clapped his hands and said to himself, "I'll do it!" At once he walked up boldly to the mayor of Rio and the superintendent of parks.

"The children have no place to play," he said. "Why don't you open up a part of the city park for a public playground?"

The mayor and the superintendent of parks were so shocked they could scarcely say a word. They were so proud of their beautiful park, they had never let people even walk on the grass; and now this bold man actually dared to propose that they should put swings and teeter boards and tennis courts right where the grass was most beautiful!

But they could not forget what he said about happy children being worth more than beautiful grass, and one day they drove to Dr. Tucker's door in a fine automobile and invited him to ride with them. They did not ask him where he wanted to go, but drove straight to the park.

"We have decided to do what you ask and let you make your playground on one condition," announced the mayor.

"Good!" said Dr. Tucker, "What's the condition?"

"That you get all the equipment for a first-class playground," answered the superintendent of parks.

Dr. Tucker was thinking very fast. "Equipment for a first-class playground" meant swings and bars and teeter boards and tennis nets and footballs and ever so many other things boys and girls love in a playground. With the same twinkle that was in his eyes when he looked at the park and said, "I'll do it," he said now, "All right, I'll take you up."

He did not have a single cent in his pocket to buy all these things and he did not know where he was going to get so much money, but he said to himself:

"I'll look around a bit and see what I can see."

The first thing he saw was some men tearing up an old street-car track. He went to the manager of the street-car company. "What are you going to do with those old rails?" he asked. "May I have them?"

"Yes, I guess so," answered the manager.

Dr. Tucker said "Thank you" very politely and then added, "I'll have to have them shaped a little differently and a few holes bored in them. Would you mind doing this in your shop?"

The manager said he would do that, too. When Dr. Tucker said "Thank you" very politely again and turned to go, the manager asked: "What in the world do you want those old rails for?"

"For swing supports and all sorts of equipment for the playground."

He told the manager about his ride with the mayor and the superintendent of parks and all about the things he was going to make for the playground and athletic fields out of those lovely old rails.

"Nonsense, man!" said the manager. "Those old rails aren't good enough. Why you ought to have the best stuff money can buy for Brazil's first public playground."

"Of course we ought," said Dr. Tucker, "but since we don't have the money to buy them with, I propose to see what we can make."

"What would you buy if you did have the money?" asked the manager. "Think it over and let me know."

Dr. Tucker went home and got a catalog of a New York store. A few days later he went into the manager's office with the catalog in his hand. The manager was so busy he scarcely had time to look up.

"Are you too busy to look at the things we need for the playground?" asked Dr. Tucker.

"Yes, I am," replied the manager. "You just take that catalog and mark what you need, and when I go to New York perhaps I can get it for you."

Dr. Tucker's eyes twinkled twice that time. He felt as if his fairy godmother had shown him a wonderful palace and told him to help himself. He sat down and marked in that catalog the things he knew the boys and girls of Rio would have marked if they had held his pencil.

The manager took the catalog to New York with him and bought every single article that had a mark before it. He paid for them with dollars—seven hundred and forty of them—out of his own pocket.

When the swings and bars and outfits came and were set up in the park, the opening day was announced. The people came in crowds from all over the city. The band played, and the flag of Brazil was raised. The mayor made a speech, and the children cheered, and then they scampered off to swing and slide and bat and jump; and the first public playground of Brazil was open.

That evening Dr. Tucker walked down the street. He thought of his million Bibles, and he thought of his school and his playground which put the love of God into visible form.

"The Bible is coming into Brazil," he said to himself. "Not only into the pulpits and into bookcases, but its spirit of love and service is coming into the parks and schools and the streets and, best of all, into the hearts of the people." And his own heart was glad.

III

THE STORY OF POIT

In the interior of South America, with the rivers Parana and Paraguay to the east, with Argentine to the south, and Bolivia to the west, there is a vast, low country called the Gran Chaco, about as large as the state of Texas and inhabited by Indians. The country is flat and there are grass-lands, swamps, and forests of palm trees. There are many different animals with which the children of the North are not familiar but of which they may have seen pictures, among them the tapir, the marsh deer, the otter, the peccary, and the armadillo. There are some savage animals such as the jaguar, the puma, and a very large wolf with a long mane.

There are also some of the queerest animals in the world, especially the ant-eater, a bow-legged creature seven feet long from the tip of his snout to the tip of his hairy tail. There is a queer little opossum about the size of a mouse, with enormous black eyes, fan-like ears, and a long tail, which runs about in the trees like a squirrel. Most interesting of all is the lungfish which can live either in the water or in the air. In the wet season he stays in the swamps and eats and eats, and when the dry season comes and the swamps disappear, he burrows in the ground and lives without eating anything, by using up the fat he has stored.

There are many birds both large and small, from great ostriches down to tiny hummingbirds, and there are insects of all kinds, ants and crickets and mosquitoes and beetles and locusts, and there are twenty-four different kinds of frogs, each with a different croak.

For many weeks no rain falls, and the Indians have a hard time to get along; then when the rain comes they have more than they need to eat, water-birds, fish, and, by-and-by, their harvests. They do not mind having to tramp round in deep water, because wet weather brings plenty.

Among the Indians in this strange country was a young man named Poit. One morning in December Poit awoke with a frightened, anxious heart. It was not because he was too warm, though in December in Chaco the mornings are hot, nor because he had not slept comfortably on his bed on the ground nor because he was hungry; it was because he plotted a wicked deed. Today Poit planned to do the most dreadful thing anyone can do, he was going to kill his best friend, the missionary.

Though these Indians lived so uncomfortably, they did not want to change their ways, and they killed everybody who came to explore their country or to search for silver or to tell them of the love of God. Even soldiers sent to conquer them by force failed because they were so fierce and cunning.

The chief reason for their resistance and their cruelty was not wickedness, but ignorance and dreadful fear. They were afraid of spirits and afraid of witches and wizards. They were so afraid that the souls of the dead might come and annoy them that whenever anyone died they destroyed the village and went to another place to live. This wasn't very difficult because their houses were made of boughs stuck into the ground. They were especially afraid of people unlike themselves, and this was the reason they killed foreigners.

In spite of their objections, a little mission had been established among them. It was situated on the banks of the Paraguay River and its influence did not extend very far inland, but it was a beginning. The first missionary died as a result of his hard work, and there arrived one day a new missionary, a tall, slender young man, hardly more than a boy in years, whose name was Barbrooke Grubb.

Mr. Grubb was not satisfied to stay along the river where he could see only a few of the Indians, he determined to travel to the interior villages. He knew perfectly well that the undertaking was dangerous. He had heard of the explorers and the missionaries whom the Indians had murdered; he knew that a poor white man who had strayed from his companions and had taken refuge with them had been slain; he knew that if sickness broke out while he was staying in a village, he would be held responsible and be killed. He knew that if an Indian had a bad dream about him, he might kill him.

Nevertheless, he not only visited the interior of the country, but he lived with the Indians for months at a time, staying in their villages, eating their strange food, hunting and fishing with them, so that he might learn all about their ways and help them. He went unarmed and unprotected, saying that he was a messenger of peace.

He had many thrilling experiences, and some that were very funny. Of course he did not know the language well at first and he mistook the word "evil" for the word "good," and assured the people that he was a friend of the "evil spirit."

He had many amusing encounters with the witch-doctors. You would not think from the picture of a Chaco witch-doctor that they could frighten anybody, but these natives lived in deadly fear of them. Mr. Grubb proved how foolish it was to have faith in them. When a witch-doctor claimed to have a charm against bullets, Mr. Grubb said:

"All right; you stand over there and I'll shoot at you, and you won't mind a bit."

The witch-doctor wouldn't hear of this trial, and the Indians laughed at him.

Once Mr. Grubb heard that a witch-doctor was taking needles out of his patients' bodies, and he proved that the witch-doctor bought all the needles from him and that the cure was a pretense.

Some of the Indians were very smart. There was one called Pinse-apawa, who came into Mr. Grubb's tent one day just as Mr. Grubb was taking some medicine. This medicine had an alcoholic smell though it had a dreadfully bitter taste, so bitter that you could hardly swallow it. Pinse-apawa smelled the odor of liquor.

"Ah!" he said. "You won't let us drink liquor, but when you are here alone you take it yourself!"

"Have some," invited Mr. Grubb.

Poor Pinse-apawa took a big swallow and after that he knew the difference between liquor and medicine.

* * * * *

Now Poit, who opened his eyes on a warm December morning intending to murder Mr. Grubb was not a witch-doctor; he was a clever, intelligent Indian, and when he was good, he was a great help. We do not like to call him a bad Indian, even though he was to do such a dreadful deed. Though he had had every chance under Mr. Grubb's teaching to learn to be good, he had not met him until he was a grown man, and then it is very hard to change your heart.

By this time Mr. Grubb had been in the Chaco for seven years, and the work he had done was truly wonderful. At the mission station there was a settlement where the people lived in permanent houses instead of wandering from place to place. Strangers could go about unarmed and in safety. The Indians had been taught to work, not only at odd moments, but steadily. They had been taught to take care of sheep and cattle and to raise vegetables.

They had learned to distrust the witch-doctors and to take precautions against contagion. They had learned to respect the law and to live at peace with their neighbors. They had built several hundred miles of cart tracks. They had axes, knives, hoes, scissors, and many other possessions which Mr. Grubb had had shipped from England to help them to live more comfortably and to earn their living more easily. Some could even read and write.

They had learned still more important lessons. Mr. Grubb had taught them that it was unspeakably wicked to kill the poor little babies as they had been doing, and equally wrong to bury alive sick people whom they thought would soon die. He had taught them also that it was wrong to drink liquor because it made them frantic and wicked. Though they did not always do what was right, hundreds of them knew what was right, and had begun to try to be good.

They knew also—and this was most important of all—about God and Jesus, and, though none had openly become Christians, the seed of Christianity had been planted in their hearts.

Now Poit had a special chance to learn what was right because he was constantly in the company of Mr. Grubb who had brought about this wonderful transformation. He was very bright and Mr. Grubb depended upon him, and he seemed very faithful and Mr. Grubb trusted him. He could hunt and set traps, and steal quietly up to the ostriches and capture them, and find his way through the woods, and make bows and arrows, and do other useful things.

When Mr. Grubb had been in the Chaco for seven years he went home to England for a vacation, the first vacation he had had. Other young men had come to help him, and the mission was so well established that it would not suffer in his absence.

Before he went away, he planned carefully for his return. He intended then to visit a distant tribe called the Toothli, to which Poit belonged, and he had already built a bullock road in that direction. He sent Poit to a distant settlement with seventeen head of cattle and other goods and told him that he was to settle down there and make friends with the people. He was not to sell the cattle to people who would use them for food, but only to those who would raise other cattle, because Mr. Grubb was very anxious for the natives to learn to care for stock.

Poit was to tell the Toothli that the missionaries would come and live with them if they would do certain things. They must give up making beer, and they must not hold feasts which lasted more than three days. They must work when they were called upon for the good of the whole settlement, and they must help to build the cart track and keep it clear. They must live at peace with their neighbors, and above all they must cease at once the killing of little children.

Poit had done so well, that this important work was entrusted to him and off he went with his cattle and his goods. He was very proud and at first he obeyed Mr. Grubb's directions. But alas, his pride in Mr. Grubb's confidence and his feeling of responsibility did not continue. He forgot what he had learned; he convinced himself that Mr. Grubb was gone for good; and he took possession of the property which Mr. Grubb had given him. He began to sell the cattle to people who used them for food, and he took the money for himself.

When Mr. Grubb came back, Poit was terrified. He had not believed Mr. Grubb's promise nor had he understood in the least how devoted Mr. Grubb was to his work. Now the money had to be paid over, and he had to give an account of the cattle, and he had spent a part of the money, and the cattle had been eaten. In order to cover his crime, he stole money from the missionaries. He was so clever that they did not at first suspect that he was the thief. But he could not bring the cattle back to life and soon he realized that discovery was at hand; Mr. Grubb would learn that he had not been faithful.

Mr. Grubb prepared at once to fulfil his promise to visit the Toothli people, and so little did he suspect Poit of wrong-doing that he made him the leader of the six Indians whom he took with him.

It was so hot that the party traveled by night to avoid the sun. They had a pretty comfortable track to walk on, but on both sides were thickets of trees and vines in which the twenty-four kinds of frogs croaked in twenty-four different notes, and everywhere were mosquitoes which flew out hungrily when they heard human beings approaching.