LITTLE NYAGANDI.
NYAGANDI is a little girl whose home is a hut on the Ogowai River in West Africa. A lady missionary to her people has told a pretty story about her.
Nyagandi has never worn any clothing except a cloth tied round her waist. Only lately has she thought of wearing anything else. Since she has been attending school in the mission-house, and learning to read, she is anxious to wear a dress like her kind friends; and so she is learning to make one out of some bright calico.
She owns a canoe, in which she darts here and there over the rivers, like a graceful, dusky bird.
One day she paddled to the mission-house and sold some bunches of plantain to the ladies.
"Now, Nya," said one of them, "tomorrow will be Sabbath, and you must come to service."
"I surely will," she answered, "if I am alive."
That night some one stole Nya's canoe, and on Sabbath morning nobody would lend her another, yet she was in her place in church in time. Her home was on the opposite shore of the river, a third of a mile wide, with a current flowing deep and strong. How had she crossed?
In the simplest way in the world—by swimming. Some of the boys had seen the dark head bobbing up and down in the waves, or it is doubtful whether she would have said a word about what she had done.
But, little girls who sometimes pout at wearing an old dress to church, please think of the African girl so anxious to keep her promise that she swam the Ogowai on Sabbath morning rather than be absent when the good missionaries expected to see her at the Christian worship.
Harper's Young People.