“From their utter want of love and appreciation of female beauty or charms they are quite satisfied and content with any woman possessing even the greatest amount of hideous ugliness with which nature has so bountifully provided them.”

A QUEER STORY

Thus we find the African mind differing from ours as widely as a picture seen directly with the eyes differs from one reflected in a concave mirror.  This is vividly illustrated by a quaint story recorded in the Folk Tales of Angola (Memoirs of Amer.  Folk Lore Soc., Vol.  I., 1804, 235-39), of which the following is a condensed version: 

An elderly man had an only child, a daughter.  This daughter, a number of men wanted her.  But whenever a suitor came, her father demanded of him a living deer; and then they all gave up, saying, “The living deer, we cannot get it.”

     One day two men came, each asking for the daughter.  The
     father answered as usual, “He who brings me the living
     deer; the same, I will give him my daughter.”

The two men made up their minds to hunt for the living deer in the forest.  They came across one and pursued it; but one of them soon got tired and said to himself:  “That woman will destroy my life.  Shall I suffer distress because of a woman?  If I bring her home, if she dies, would I seek another?  I will not run again to catch a living deer.  I never saw it, that a girl was wooed with a living deer.”  And he gave up the chase.

The other man persevered and caught the deer.  When he approached with it, his companion said, “Friend, the deer, didst thou catch it indeed?” Then the other:  “I caught it.  The girl delights me much.  Rather I would sleep in forest, than to fail to catch it.”

Then they returned to the father and brought him the deer.  But the father called four old men, told them what had happened, and asked them to choose a son-in-law for him among the two hunters.  Being questioned by the aged men, the successful hunter said:  “My comrade pursued and gave up; I, your daughter charmed me much, even to the heart, and I pursued the deer till it gave in....  My comrade he came only to accompany me.”

Then the other was asked why he gave up the chase, if he wanted the girl, and he replied:  “I never saw that they wooed a girl with a deer....  When I saw the great running I said, ’No, that woman will cost my life.  Women are plentiful,’ and I sat down to await my comrade.”

Then the aged men:  “Thou who gavest up catching the deer, thou art our son-in-law.  This gentleman who caught the deer, he may go with it; he may eat it or he may sell it, for he is a man of great heart.  If he wants to kill he kills at once; he does not listen to one who scolds him, or gives him advice.  Our daughter, if we gave her to him, and she