IN WESTERN AFRICA. 
317 
could play the cobbler and barber, and a doctor 
who could practice dentistry, surgery, and mend 
things generally. Strange as it may seem, it is 
an important part of mission-work there to teach 
the people how to farm, how to build and live in 
houses, how to raise, cook, and eat food, how to 
make and wear clothing, how to take care of 
their bodies as well as their souls. If they are to 
be civilized and Christianized they must be helped 
out of the small, dirty, cheerless, mud-huts in 
which they now live. Clothes must be put upon 
their naked bodies, their food must be eaten from 
tables instead of sitting on the ground and taking 
it with their hands out of the vessel in wdiich it 
was cooked, and they must sleep upon some kind 
of decent' beds instead of on grass-mats as the 
majority of them now do. To accomplish these 
things, profitable employment must be given 
them. They -are capable of intellectual, moral, 
and physical culture, of mastering the most diffi- 
cult professions and trades, and of becoming good 
mechanics, doctors, lawyers, preachers, and au- 
thors. They love to acquire property, and show 
real skill in amassing and managing wealth, as a 
rule, to good advantage. In Freetown many of 
the most successful merchants, doctors, and minis- 
ters are colored men ; and the most successful and 
well-qualified lawyer there is a full-blooded negro 
and a native African. 
