THE PROBLEM OF THE EDUCATED NATIVE 123 
knowledge whom they can employ in administration 
and in the stores. The schools, therefore, must set 
their aims higher than is natural, and produce people 
who understand complicated figures and can write the 
white man’s language perfectly. Many a native has 
such ability that the results of this attempt are, so far 
as intellectual knowledge goes, astounding. Not long 
ago there came to me a native Government clerk, just 
at the time that there was also a missionary staying 
with me. When the clerk went away, the missionary 
and I said to each other ; “ Well, we could hardly 
compete with him in essay writing ! ” His chief gives 
him documents of the most difficult sort to draw up 
and most complicated statistics to work out, and he 
does it all faultlessly. 
But what becomes of these people ? They have been 
uprooted from their villages, just like those who go off 
to work for strangers. They live at the store, con- 
tinually exposed to the dangers which haunt every 
native so closely, the temptations to defraud and to 
drink. They earn good wages, indeed, but as they have 
to buy all their necessaries at high prices, and are a 
prey to the black man’s innate love of spending, they 
often find themselves in financial difficulties and even 
in want. They do not now belong to the ordinary 
negroes, nor do they belong to the whites either ; they 
are a ter Hum quid between the two. Quite recently the 
above-mentioned Government clerk said to the wife of 
a missionary : “ We negro intellectuals are in a very 
uncomfortable position. The women in these parts 
are too uneducated to be good wives for us. They 
should import wives for us from the higher tribes in 
Madagascar.” This loss of class position in an upwards 
