charm will so please his mother that she will call a family council after the two have gone to bed. If the family thinks as the mother does, they determine to marry the young man to that girl, and they do so after this fashion:

Early in the morning, just at dawn, before the young couple awake, all the women of the household arouse them with shrieks. They beat their breasts, cut themselves with shells, crying loudly, Aue! Aue! Neighbors rush in to see who has died. The youth and the girl run forth in terror. Then the mother, the grandmother, and all other women of the house chant the praises of the girl, singing her beauty, and wailing that they cannot let her go. They demand with anger that the son shall not let her go. All the neighbours cry with them, Aue! Aue! and beat their breasts, until the son, covered with shame, asks the girl to stay.

Then her parents are sent the word, and if they do not object, the girl remains in his house. That is often the manner of Marquesan marriage.

In New Zealand are still found definite traces of marriage by capture. According to the custom of this land, the more a bride kicks, cries, and struggles the more she is applauded by her friends. An eyewitness tells us that "even when all were agreeable, it was the custom for the groom to go with a party and appear to take her away by force, her friends yielding her up only after a feigned struggle." In New Guinea, we are told, the bridegroom carries off the bride or elopes with her, and afterward pays a compensation price to the parents.

Among the Todas and Osages the marriage contract resembles an act of barter. But it is not barter in its true sense. The Osage bride is stripped of her clothes and ornaments, which are made into one pile and carried to the groom's mother as a gift. She receives in exchange clothes and ornaments equally valuable. To conclude this exchange, which is merely a ceremonious custom with no definite significance, a family feast is given. A similar custom is noticed among the Chippewas, whose weddings always terminate in a feast at which gifts are exchanged between the bridegroom and the relatives of the bride. Among the Natchez it was the custom for the bridal pair to eat out of one dish. Later the bridegroom smoked the

calumet, wafting the first fumes toward the parents of his wife and the second fumes toward his own parents, in ceremonious token of the alliance.

The Malay bridegroom is expected to remain under the roof and eye of his mother-in-law for a period of two years. After the expiration of that period he is permitted to remove with his wife to a house of his own. It is only then that he is considered actually married.

A glimpse at the marriage customs existing in Ceram reveals a bit of rare wisdom existing in the marriage compact. One reads, "What the husband wishes the wife must wish, and what the wife wishes, the husband must also wish; and let them not forget their parents." An excellent piece of matrimonial advice!

A curious custom is noticed in Uganda. After the marriage day the bride is permitted to remain idle for a full month. At the end of the month her relatives bring her a gift in the form of food. When the food has been entirely consumed, the bride begins housekeeping.

In Albania, which is a tiny country in the southeast of Europe, fire is regarded as one of life's sacred symbols. Therefore fire plays a large part in the marriage ceremonies. Wives are still abducted by the Albanians, and when a wife is "captured" she is taken to his home and placed before the fireplace. A huge fire is built and the girl is given a large pair of fire tongs. For three full days she is obliged to stand beside the fireplace, her head bowed, her hands grasping the fire tongs. She may not speak. She may not rest. Whatever food or drink she is given. is brought to her. At the end of this ordeal she is considered married and she takes her place in the household. We are told that among the Albanians a heavy belt takes the place of our wedding ring. It is placed around the waist of the bride, after the three-day ordeal, and is preserved by her throughout life. Recent travellers in this faraway land tell us that even when a bride and groom are married at church by a priest, they go through this

age-old ceremonial of the country and do not consider themselves actually married until they have done so.

There is probably no sect or class of people throughout the civilized world who use so little pomp and ceremony in their marriage customs as the Quakers. These people use no oaths. They have no elaborate feasting, no complex or complicated rites. They simply make assertion before witnesses that they will live together, and so they do.

No matter where our fancy may lead us, no matter with what people we may wander, we find interesting rites and customs based upon the old, old institution of marriage. In Spain we meet the duenna and her charge coming to meet the bridegroom promised in infancy. In the East we find sanctified prostitution; we see instances of legalized polygamy. We meet the girls of pleasure at Venice. We come upon a picturesque Tartar wedding. We walk in the shadow of a Turkish harem. We watch the dancing girls at Cairo. All age-old customs of the people. All the heritage of the centuries that have slipped from the shoulders of Life.

But we, who are concerned solely with the customs that relate to us in our daily life, must resist the great temptation to wander along the highways and byways of the Old World, glimpsing the customs of yesterday as they blend with the customs of to-day. Fancy, if we permitted it, would lead us into an intricate maze of facts, fears, superstitions, from which it would be difficult to escape.

And so we leave it here, recognizing with Sigmund Freud that "The man of prehistoric times lives on, unchanged, in our Unconscious."

CHAPTER IX

GIFT-MAKING

The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? ilization, or is he past it, and mastering it?

Is he waiting for civ-WALT WHITMAN.

Every human being has two personalities: an archaic, primitive, childlike, unadapted personality, and a modern, sophisticated, adult, and to all appearances, adapted personality. -ANDRE TRIDON.

S

PRIMITIVE REASONS FOR GIFT-MAKING

O simply and naturally has gift-making slipped into our scheme of things that we scarcely recognize its presence. Yet, like most human proclivities, it has a primitive background that reaches far back into antiquity. From the very earliest periods, gift-making has existed in some form or other. Our savage ancestors made gifts habitually. But gift-giving in primitive life did not grow out of any thought or idea connected with generosity. It was not based upon the simple desire to give, or to please. There were other more selfish reasons, born of the circumstances and conditions of life in which early man found himself.

We know that primitive man was selfish. He was unutterably superstitious. He feared and distrusted strangers. He scorned the weak; he cringed before the strong. The conditions of his life made him so. And these conditions, as we shall presently see, gave fundamental reason for the custom of gift-making.

Whatever impulses primitive man may have had to share his possessions, or to make a gift of something which he would have preferred to keep for himself, grew out of fear. We can be pretty certain from what we know of the primitive nature that early man would not have

parted with anything he wanted, unless he was afraid. It was usually some external condition, threatening his safety and well-being, that prompted the making of a gift. The whole principle of sacrifice in religious systems is based on this theory.

To Appease the Anger of the Gods.-There was probably nothing that primitive man feared more than the elements. He feared them because he could not understand them. The lightning ripping suddenly out of the sky and across the earth; the thunder rumbling angrily through the heavens; the wind tearing through the jungle in fury-all filled him with an overwhelming fear.

He did not reason that these were natural elements and that nothing he could possibly do would in any way affect them. He tried to control the wind and the rain by magic. He shot at the storm with his arrows. He chased the wind and shouted at the thunder. And when all his efforts failed, his fear increased.

What had he done to anger the gods? For surely the gods had sent these demons to punish him.

Out of this thought grew the idea of making gifts and sacrifices to the gods to appease their anger. Great mounds of earth were piled high and on them placed the offerings of the tribe. Sometimes food was the gift offered, and it was burned so that its fragrance might waft into the heavens and reach the nostrils of the gods.

So great a hold did this idea of gift-making to appease the anger of the gods take upon the primitive mind that even children were sacrificed. We are told that thousands of infants were sacrificed yearly to Moloch, hideous oxheaded god of the savage Phoenicians. The people gladly gave their children to the gods in return for safety, plenty, comfort.

Gifts to the Dead.-Early men feared the dead. Among some primitive peoples we find prevalent the thought that the dead send the thunder and the lightning. Among others we find the belief that the spirits of the dead haunt