hide herself, he flew to the young woman and lifted up his club to bring her to the ground, and thus satisfy his revenge.  The victim trembled, yet, knowing his power, she stood with all the fortitude she could; lifting up her eyes, they came in contact with his and such was the enchanting beauty of her form (!) that he stood an instant motionless to gaze on it (!).  The poor thing saw this and dropped on her knees (!) to implore his pity, but before she could speak, his revenge softened into love (!); he threw down his club, and clasping her in his arms (!) vowed eternal constancy (!!!); his pity gained her love (!), thus each procured a mutual return.  Then calling his sister, she would have executed her revenge, but for her brother, who told her she was now his wife.  On my hero asking after his sister, his new wife said she was very ill, but would soon be better; and she excused her brother (!) because the means he had taken were the customary one of procuring a wife (!!); ‘but you,’ said she, ’have more white heart’ (meaning he was more like the English), ’you no beat me; me love you; you love me; me love your sisters; your sisters love me; my brother no good man.’  This artless address won both their hearts, and now all three live in one hut which I enabled them to make comfortable within half a mile of my own house.”

Barrington concludes with these words:  “This little anecdote I have given as the young man related it to me and perhaps I have lost much of its simplicity.”  It is very much to be feared that he has.  I have marked with, exclamation points the most absurdly impossible parts of the tale as idealized and embellished by Barrington.  The Australian never told him that he “gazed motionless” on the “enchanting beauty” of the girl’s form or that his “revenge softened into love;” he never clasped her in his arms, nor “vowed eternal constancy.”  The girl never dreamt of saying that his pity gained her love, or of excusing her brother for doing what all Australian men do.  These sentimental touches are gratuitous additions of Barrington; native Australians do not even clasp each other in their arms, and they are as incapable of vowing eternal constancy as of comparing Herbert Spencer’s philosophy with Schopenhauer’s.  Yet on the strength of such dime novel rubbish an anthropologist assures us that savages are capable of feeling pure romantic love!  The kernel of truth in the above tale reduces itself to this, that the young man whose sister was stolen intended to take revenge by killing the abductor, but that on seeing his sister he concluded to marry her.  These savages, as we have seen, always act thus, killing the enemy’s women only when unable to carry them off.

RISKING LIFE FOR A WOMAN

Lumholtz relates the following story to show that “these blacks also may be greatly overcome by the sentiment of love” (213):