polygamous household. But on the other hand may fairly be cited the
frequent instances, familiar to all, of widows and widowers among
Europeans who, despite their repeated and quite honest protestations of
undying and undivided love for the first "one and only" mate,
nevertheless find speedy consolation in a second marriage in which
undying and whole-hearted love for the second "one and only" spouse is
again declared and accepted in all sincerity. The phenomenon of "falling
in love," as it is commonly called, is not peculiar to white people. I
have known many cases where the love-sick Native swain has travelled
hundreds of miles and suffered great hardships in order to reach or
recover the one woman of his choice though other women, no less
desirable, were ready to be had for the asking at his home. The converse
is even more commonly seen. Native women are remarkably like white
women. They look upon marriage as their proper and natural function in
life, but they are not all of them willing to marry according to
parental instructions; there is the same proportion of self-willed
damsels among them as among the whites, who by obdurately refusing to
enter into the marriages arranged for them cause pain and trouble to
their well-meaning parents.

Jealousy, especially from the female side, is an ever-present source of
trouble and unhappiness among the Natives. The length to which a jealous
Native wife will go in winning back the affections of an errant husband
is often extraordinary, though the ways and means she adopts differ but
little from those practised by the superstitious and credulous peasantry
in Europe less than a hundred years ago.

While no one will deny the African Native a capacity for feeling anger
equal to that of the white man when provoked by insult and injury there
are many who believe that he is constitutionally incapable of sustaining