-•) The Languages of Liberia 



little, I will tell you by-and-by.' After this Doalu awoke, 

 and, as he told me in a sorrowful tone, was never afterwards 

 informed of what was written in the book. In the morning 

 he called his friends together, in order to tell them his dream — 

 viz. his brother Jara Barakora, and his cousins Jara Kali, Kalia. 

 Bara, Fa Gbasi, and So Tabaku, the latter of whom died about 

 three years ago. They were all exceedingly pleased with the 

 dream, and quite sure that it was a divine revelation. A few 

 days after, Kalia Bara, also, as he himself told me, had a dream 

 — the reality of which, however, I doubt — in which a white 

 man told him that the book had come from God, and that they 

 must mind it well. 



" Perhaps it may not be amiss to state here what, in my 

 opinion, will account for Doalu Bukere's dream. Doalu Bukere 

 was a thinking man ; and what once occupied his mind seemed 

 to occupy it altogether and constantly : all his thoughts and 

 energies seemed to be concentrated on this subject. Now there 

 was once a white missionary in the country, with whom Doalu, 

 when quite a little boy, had learnt to read for about three 

 months, till the missionary's departure. This, in some measure, 

 awakened his desire for learning. He could still repeat some 

 verses from the English Bible, which he had learnt from that 

 missionary. Afterwards he was employed as a servant by 

 slave-traders and common traders on the coast. They often 

 sent him on an errand to distant places, from which he had 

 generally to bring back letters to his master. In these letters 

 his master was sometimes informed when Doalu had done any 

 mischief in the place to which he had been sent. Now this 

 forcibly struck him. He said to himself: 'How is this, that 

 my master knows everything which I have done in a distant 

 place ? He only looks into the book, and this tells him all. 

 Such a thing we ought also to have by which we could speak 



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