Improvements 
them. Utterly worthless was the shoe that had 
no “ cracklin.” A note from a Sierra Leone man 
at Lagos to one of our boys, who had bought a 
pair of shoes from him, contained this sentence, 
“You say shoe no good because it have no 
cracklin, but 1 am thankful that I have the honor 
to say that shoe have much cracklin.” To this 1 
was able to testify, for whenever he put them on, 
the “cracklin” loudly proclaimed his approach. 
This strange fancy obtained even among edu¬ 
cated Sierra Leone teachers and I suppose our 
boys got it from them. Our teacher was really a 
very intelligent and worthy man, but he had a 
finished Xantippe in his wife. She was young 
and comely but had many of the mental and 
moral characteristics of a heathen concealed by a 
rather thin veneering of European civilization. 
She seemed to take pleasure in worrying her hus¬ 
band because he could not punish her as the 
heathen men punished their wives. After fre¬ 
quently reprimanding the teacher for tardiness, I 
found that he had been detained by the childish 
perverseness of his wife, even though she knew 
he was in danger of losing his position by such 
neglect of duty. One Sunday morning, when he 
was in a great hurry to get ready for Sunday- 
school, she sat down on his clothes and refused 
261 
