Liberia ^ 



sometimes more comely sister. Let that be, however. What 

 is wrong with the dress of the Liberian women is wrong, or 

 was wrong last year, with the costume of our own women in 

 Europe and America. But with regard to the Liberian man, 

 must he always worship such hideous idols } Will there never 

 arise a President and a Congress that will have the courage and 

 the true insight into what is needful to pass a sumptuary law 

 which shall penalise the wearing or even the introduction of 

 the tall black silk hat and the long, long black frock coat? If 

 the present writer were a Liberian, he would strive with 

 might and main to induce his fellow-countrymen to adopt 

 the becoming, the economical, the sanitary, the decent, the 

 statuesque, and the richly coloured costume of the Man- 

 dingo. 



In this we touch one of the weaknesses of Liberia, of 

 these twelve thousand Americanised Negroes. Their ideals 

 are pitifully Anglo-Saxon. There must be enormous power 

 in the Aryan races of North Europe. How completely the 

 Frenchman has stamped his impress on the American Indian 

 and on the Negro ! With what equal completeness the Anglo- 

 Saxon in America or even in the West Indies has created 

 an Englishman or a Scotsman in mind and ideals out of the 

 slave torn from the African jungle whose descendants have 

 lived one, two, or three generations on American soil ! The 

 Christianity of Liberia is an exact mimicry of the narrow, 

 warped Christianity of England from Puritan times to the 

 dawn of better things in the middle of the nineteenth century. 

 Thje teaching of Christ which might be accepted by the whole 

 world without demur is overloaded with a worship of the 

 letter of the Old Testament which is inconceivably wearisome, 

 time-wasting, and futile. Of what practical utility to the 

 modern man in Liberia, or in England, or in Kamschatka, 



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