We are thus brought to the beginning of a series of traits of manners, highly curious in themselves, and essential to an understanding of the war.  In Samoa authority sits on the one hand entranced; on the other, property stands bound in the midst of chartered marauders.  What property exists is vested in the family, not in the individual; and of the loose communism in which a family dwells, the dictionary may yet again help us to some idea.  I find a string of verbs with the following senses:  to deal leniently with, as in helping oneself from a family plantation; to give away without consulting other members of the family; to go to strangers for help instead of to relatives; to take from relatives without permission; to steal from relatives; to have plantations robbed by relatives.  The ideal of conduct in the family, and some of its depravations, appear here very plainly.  The man who (in a native word of praise) is mata-ainga, a race-regarder, has his hand always open to his kindred; the man who is not (in a native term of contempt) noa, knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or extremity of laziness.  Beggary within the family—­and by the less self-respecting, without it—­has thus grown into a custom and a scourge, and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse.  Special words signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro, of taro-tops, of taro-tops for planting, of tools, of flyhooks, of implements for netting pigeons, and of mats.  It is true the beggar was supposed in time to make a return, somewhat as by the Roman contract of mutuum.  But the obligation was only moral; it could not be, or was not, enforced; as a matter of fact, it was disregarded.  The language had recently to borrow from the Tahitians a word for debt; while by a significant excidence, it possessed a native expression for the failure to pay—­“to omit to make a return for property begged.”  Conceive now the position of the householder besieged by harpies, and all defence denied him by the laws of honour.  The sacramental gesture of refusal, his last and single resource, was supposed to signify “my house is destitute.”  Until that point was reached, in other words, the conduct prescribed for a Samoan was to give and to continue giving.  But it does not appear he was at all expected to give with a good grace.  The dictionary is well stocked with expressions standing ready, like missiles, to be discharged upon the locusts—­“troop of shamefaced ones,” “you draw in your head like a tern,” “you make your voice small like a whistle-pipe,” “you beg like one delirious”; and the verb pongitai, “to look cross,” is equipped with the pregnant rider, “as at the sight of beggars.”