On one of my voyages to Africa a certain missionary was regarded as “the biggest liar on board.” What in the world ever attracted him to the mission field it were hard to imagine. Criticism of other and all missionaries was his favourite employment, especially when conversing with those who were hostile to the work. While we were anchored at Accra I heard him say to a trader, as he pointed ashore towards the splendid English mission: “That is where the missionaries take in heathen and turn out devils.” He did not stay long in the mission but he did considerable harm in a short time and created painful misunderstandings that were by no means removed by his departure. Imagine the position of a missionary placed perhaps alone with such a man, with no other companionship and no escape from his neighbourhood! Moreover the report of the missionary’s work, and even his reputation, depends upon the other man; he is therefore at his mercy. For the reputation of one who labours in a lonely and distant field may be indefinitely greater or less than he deserves. The man of whom I speak, after his return to America, figured in the police courts in New York City, where he was arrested on a very serious and odious charge. His record there is still accessible. Well-meaning missionaries sometimes make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of white men by their attitude and manner towards the natives. I once witnessed such a scene, when a missionary standing on deck, in the presence of white men, conversed with a group of natives in a manner so unseemly and so silly that the comments of the white men were chiefly oaths and ribald laughter. When at last the natives after an hour on board were about to go ashore, one of them, a young savage about sixteen or seventeen years of age with scarcely a stitch of clothing on him, came to the missionary and said: “Me, I go for shore;” whereupon the missionary extended his hand and lifting his huge helmet exclaimed in a very loud voice accompanied by a sweeping bow: “Goodbye, sir; good-bye; and I’m happy to have met you, sir.” The captain in a voice of thunder turned to me and said: “Who is that fool?” I have weakened the captain’s forceful language by omitting his expletive, which the average reader will easily supply. More frequently, yet perhaps not often, the missionary errs in his attitude towards his worldly-minded fellow passengers on these long voyages—is unamiable, or indulges in moral strictures in a way that cannot possibly do good, and is calculated to create prejudice and antipathy.