“When a young man is unable to purchase the girl he loves best, or if her parents are unwilling she should marry him, if he have gained the heart of the maiden he is safe.  They appoint a time and place to meet; take whatever will be necessary for their journey....  Sometimes they merely go to the next village to return the next day.  But if they fancy a bridal tour, away they go several hundred miles, with the grass for their pillow, the canopy of heaven for their curtains, and the bright stars to watch over them.  When they return home the bride goes at once to chopping wood, and the groom to smoking.”

What does such a romantic incident tell us regarding the nature of the elopers’ feelings—­whether they are refined and sentimental or purely sensual and frivolous?  Nothing whatever.  But the last sentence of Mrs. Eastman’s description—­photographed from life—­indicates the absence of at least four of the most elementary and important ingredients of romantic love.  If he adored his bride, if he sympathized with her feelings, if he felt the faintest impulse toward gallantry or sacrifice of his selfish comforts, he would not allow her to chop wood while he loafed and smoked.  Moreover, if he had an appreciation of personal beauty he would not permit his wife to sacrifice hers before she is out of her teens by making her do all the hard work.  But why should he care?  Since all his marriage customs are on a commercial basis, why should he not discard a wife of thirty and take two new ones of fifteen each?

SUICIDE AND LOVE

Having thus disposed of elopements, let us examine another phenomenon which has always been a mainstay of those who would fain make out that in matters of love there is no difference between us and savages.  Waitz (III., 102) accepts stories of suicide as evidence of genuine romantic love, and Westermarck follows his example (358, 530), while Catlin (II., 143) mentions a rock called Lover’s Leap,

“from the summit of which, it is said, a beautiful Indian girl, the daughter of a chief, threw herself off, in presence of her tribe, some fifty years ago, and dashed herself to pieces, to avoid being married to a man whom her father had decided to be her husband, and whom she would not marry.”

Keating has a story which he tells with all the operatic embellishments indulged in by his guide (I., 280).  Reduced to its simplest terms, the tale, as he gives it, is as follows: 

In a village of the tribe of Wapasha there lived a girl named Winona.  She became attached to a young hunter who wished to marry her, but her parents refused their consent, having intended her for a prominent warrior.  Winona would not listen to the warrior’s addresses and told her parents she preferred the hunter, who would always be with her, to the warrior, who would be constantly away on martial exploits.  The parents paid no attention to her remonstrances