We have read dreadful accounts of the relapse of civilized natives to their old form of life. Bright boys taken from the interior towns and villages are trained in mission schools, or even sent to the United States, and given a fairly liberal education. They have become nominal Christians; they have learned English and can read and write; they wear white men’s dress and seem to have adopted white men’s ways; much is expected of them when they return to their native country in the way of mission effort with their people. After they return, all changes; their Christianity takes flight; having no one but their own people with whom to converse, they return to the native dialect; as the European dress wears out, they soon possess a nondescript wardrobe; instead of leading their people in the ways of industry, they sit down at ease; gradually they resume natural relations with their people and play the part of advisers to the chiefs, or even themselves become petty chiefs; of them it is frequently claimed that they have all the vices of Christian and pagan and none of the virtues of either. There is more or less of reality in such accounts. But it is not true, even in these cases, that nothing has been gained. One must not expect rare individuals to produce rapid results in a great mass of population. It is doubtful whether the result is harmful. The importance, however, of impressing upon all children, who are taken into mission schools, their relation to the government, their duty to it, and the advantage of co-operation with it, should be profoundly emphasized; in such schools loyalty is as important a subject for inculcation as religion, reading, and industry. If as much care were taken to instruct the mission child in his duties as a citizen, as is taken in other directions, every one of these persons on their return to the bush would be a genuinely helpful and elevating influence. It is also true that Americo-Liberians occasionally take to the bush. Sometimes they are persons who have had difficulties in the settlements and find it convenient to change location; sometimes they are men who have married native women and find it easier and more profitable to turn their attention toward the natives; sometimes they are traders who spend about one-half their time in settlements and the other half in going from town to town to secure products; sometimes they are shiftless vagabonds merely drifting from place to place in order to avoid labor. Such Liberians among the natives may be found everywhere. They are usually of little value to those among whom they live. But the fact that there are such should not be over-emphasized. It is by no means true that the Americo-Liberians as a whole tend to throw off civilization and to become degenerate.