But while perfectly sincere in his indignation over the treatment of the natives and his own losses, his playful fancy could find a ludicrous side for what concerned himself, and grim enjoyment in showing it to his friends.  “Think,” he writes to his friend Watt, “think of a big fat Boeress drinking coffee out of my kettle, and then throwing her tallowy corporeity on my sofa, or keeping her needles in my wife’s writing-desk!  Ugh! and then think of foolish John Bull paying so many thousands a year for the suppression of the slave-trade, and allowing Commissioner Aven to make treaties with Boers who carry on the slave-trade....  The Boers are mad with rage against me because my people fought bravely.  It was I, they think, who taught them to shoot Boers.  Fancy your reverend friend teaching the young idea how to shoot Boers, and praying for a blessing on the work of his hands!”

In the same spirit he writes to his friend Moore: 

“I never knew I was so rich until I recounted up the different articles that were taken away.  They cannot be replaced in this country under L300.  Many things brought to our establishment by my better-half were of considerable value.  Of all I am now lightened, and they want to ease me of my head....  The Boers kill the blacks without compunction, and without provocation, because they believe they have no souls....  Viewing the dispensation apart from the extreme wickedness of the Boers, it seemed a judgment on the blacks for their rejection of the gospel.  They have verily done despite unto the Spirit of grace....  Their enmity was not manifested to us, but to the gospel.  I am grieved for them, and still hope that the good seed will yet vegetate[36].”

[Footnote 36:  This letter to Mr. Moore contains a trait of Livingstone, very trifling in the occasion out of which it arose, but showing vividly the nature of the man.  He had promised to send Mr. Moore’s little son some curiosities, but had forgotten when his family went to England.  Being reminded of his promise in a postscript the little fellow had added to a letter from his father, Livingstone is “overwhelmed with shame and confusion of face.”  He feels he has disappointed the boy and forgotten his promise.  Again and again Livingstone returns to the subject, and feels assured that his young friend would forgive him if he knew how much he suffered for his fault.  That in the midst of his own overwhelming troubles he should feel so much for the disappointment of a little heart in England, shows how terrible a thing it was to him to cause needless pain, and how profoundly it distressed him to seem forgetful of a promise.  Years afterward he wrote that he had brought an elephant’s tail for Henry, but one of the men stole all the hairs and sold them.  He had still a tusk of a hippopotamus for him, and a tooth for his brother, but he had brought no curiosities, for he could scarcely get along himself.]

But while he could relax playfully at the thought of the desolation at Kolobeng, he knew how to make it the occasion likewise of high resolves.  The Boers, as he wrote the Directors, were resolved to shut up the interior.  He was determined, with God’s help, to open the country.  Time would show which would be most successful in resolution,—­they or he.  To his brother-in-law he wrote that he would open a path through the country, or perish.