ters of the land, are to train the whole of the rising generation, now growing up around us, down, forever through all the deep dim vistas of coming ages. The influence of woman in this great work is deeper and more powerful than that of man; and especially in those years of our life when we are most susceptible. But no one who looks carefully at the state of things in this country, can suppose, for a moment, that either justice is done to the intellect of this sex, or, that women, in this land, feel the burden of obligation which rests so heavily upon them. The latter fact, however, peculiarly affects me. I must confess myself amazed at the general frivolousness of the female mind in this country. It is one of the most astonishing problems that my mind has ever been called upon to solve, how women can live such trifling, unthinking lives, as they do in this land. When I look at the severe and rugged aspects of actual existence in this young country, I find it difficult to understand how it is that Parisian millinery can maintain such a tyrannous control, as it does, over the sex, from Cape Mount to Palmas.
I do not blame women so much for this state of things; nor do I forget the somewhat pardonable fact that dress is the only Fine Art we have in Liberia. The world has been six thousand years in existence, and it has hardly yet begun to do justice to the intellect of woman.[1] Here, on this soil, this injustice
- ↑ "It seems needful that something should be said specially about the education of women. As regards their interests they have been unkindly treated—too much flattered, too little respected. They are shut up in a world of conventionabilities, and naturally believe that to be the
