HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT 139

you last night." He had the name pat, he laughed in a
nervous servile way after every sentence, and there was
something unmistakably clerical about his manner,
One felt the Sermon on the Mount was somewhere
about, though it had gone sour. He was a missionary
from Monrovia, and now he was engaged in building
his new mission. Like Mr. Reeves he believed in con-
crete and like Mr. Reeves he kept his brother blacks
well in hand.

He said, "The chief had everything prepared for
you last night/ and again he laughed as much as to
say, 1 know I'm laughable, Fm only a black and you
are a white, you are laughing at me, but you needn't
think I don't laugh too/ He led the way up to Pan-
demai, laughing and complaining all the way, not
taking himself seriously, with a bitter humility which
didn't really disguise the hardness and meanness
below it. I wanted to go straight through; I was
afraid of trouble with the carriers if they once put
down their loads, but the missionary was too ready
to accept my refusal as one more sign that he was
despised. I couldn't give him that excuse, and now
that my cousin had joined us, I let the missionary
lead the way to his two-roomed hut in the town. The
place was bug-ridden; we had only sat on the porch
for a minute, while we ate the bananas he brought in
a wooden bowl, before we realised that.

Sir Alfred Sharpe passed through Pandemai, "an
old war town", in 1919, and was received with great
hospitality by the local chief. Perhaps the black
missionary had not then arrived: now the town
seemed dead: the chief when he came, a sullen sup-
pressed man who presented his dash of a chicken and