Are We a Declining Race ? 



building. If entered, it will be found filled with 

 crazy benches ; beyond them, rises a huge 

 octagonal pulpit, in which, if the day be Sun- 

 day, we shall find the native minister arrayed in 

 a greenish black swallow-tailed coat, a neck- 

 cloth once white, and a pair of spectacles, which 

 he probably does not need, preaching to a con- 

 gregation, the male portion of which is dressed 

 in much the same manner as himself, while the 

 women are dressed in old battered hats and 

 bonnets, and shapeless gowns like bathing 

 dresses, or it may be crinolines of an early type. 

 Chiefs of influence and women of high birth, 

 who in their native dress would look, and do 

 look, the ladies and gentlemen that they 

 are, by their Sunday finery, given the appearance 

 of attendants on Jack-in-the-Green. Hard by is 

 the school, where, owing to the proscription of 

 native clothing, the children appear in tattered 

 rags, under the tuition of a master, whose gar- 

 ments resemble those of an Irish scarecrow, and 

 they are probably repeating a list cf English 

 counties, or some similar information equally 

 useful to a Polynesian Islander. . . . The 

 whole life of these village folk is one piece of 

 unreal acting. . . . Their faces have, for the 

 most part, an expression of discontent, they 

 move about silently and joylessly ; rebels at 

 heart to the restrictive coils on them. 

 They have good ground for their dissatisfaction. 

 At the time when I visited the village I have 

 especially in my eye, it was punishable by fine 

 and imprisonment to wear native clothing ; 

 punishable by fine and imprisonment to make 

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