"Yes, sah," the messenger said, saluting.
The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In
the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he
had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must
never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree. Such
attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to
write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that
book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed
a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost
write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph,
at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out
details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The
Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
The End