The Dorcas and missionary societies of the church are particularly active, but they were somewhat discouraged a year or two ago by certain unforeseen occurrences.  The ladies of the Dorcas Society made up a large quantity of shirts, trousers and socks, and boxed them up and sent them to a missionary station on the west coast of Africa.  A man named Ridley went out with the boxes and stayed in Africa for several months.  When he returned, the Dorcas Society, of course, was anxious to hear how its donation was received, and Ridley one evening met the members and told them about it in a little speech.  He said,

“Well, you know, we got the clothes out there all right, and after a while we distributed them among some of the natives in the neighborhood.  We thought maybe it would attract them to the mission, but it didn’t; and after some time had elapsed and not a native came to church with the clothes on, I went out on an exploring expedition to find out about it.  It seems that on the first day after the goods were distributed one of the chiefs attempted to dress himself in a shirt.  He didn’t exactly understand it, and he pushed his legs through the arms and gathered the tail up around his waist.  He couldn’t make it stay up, however, and they say he went around inquiring in his native tongue what kind of an idiot it was that constructed a garment that wouldn’t hang on, and swearing some of the most awful heathen oaths.  At last he let it drag, and that night he got his legs tangled in it somehow and fell over a precipice and was killed.

“Another chief who got one on properly went paddling around in the dark, and the people, imagining that he was a ghost, sacrificed four babies to keep off the evil spirit.

[Illustration:  THE HEATHEN CLOTHE THEMSELVES]

“And then, you know, those trousers you sent out?  Well, they fitted one pair on an idol, and then they stuffed most of the rest with leaves and set them up as kind of new-fangled idols and began to worship them.  They say that the services were very impressive.  Some of the women split a few pairs in half, and after sewing up the legs used them to carry yams in; and I saw one chief with a corduroy leg on his head as a kind of helmet.

“I think, though, the socks were most popular.  All the fighting-men went for them the first thing.  They filled them with sand and used them as boomerangs and war-clubs.  I learned that they were so much pleased with the efficiency of those socks that they made a raid on a neighboring tribe on purpose to try them; and they say they knocked about eighty women and children on the head before they came home.  They asked me if I wouldn’t speak to you and get you to send out a few barrels more, and to make them a little stronger, so’s they’d last longer; and I said I would.

“This society’s doing a power of good to those heathen, and I’ve no doubt if you keep right along with the work you will inaugurate a general war all over the continent of Africa and give everybody an idol of his own.  All they want is enough socks and trousers.  I’ll take them when I go out again.”