As I have just intimated, a modern romantic lover would not exchange a beloved beggar-maid for an heiress or princess; nor would he give her for a dozen other girls, however charming, and with permission to marry them all. Now if romantic love had always existed, the lower races would have the same violent and exclusive preference for individuals. But what are the facts? I assert, without fear of contradiction from any one familiar with anthropological literature, that a savage or barbarian, be he Australian, African, American, or Asiatic, would laugh at the idea of refusing to exchange one woman for a dozen others equally young and attractive. It is not necessary to descend to the lowest savages to find corroboration of this view. Dr. Zöller, an unusually intelligent and trustworthy observer, says, in one of his volumes on German Africa (III., 70-71), that

"on the whole no distinction whatever is made between woman and woman, between the good-looking and the ugly, the intelligent and the stupid ones. In all my African experiences I have never heard of a single young man or woman who conceived a violent passion for a particular individual of the opposite sex."

So in other parts of Africa. The natives of Borgou, we are told by R. and J. Lander, marry with perfect indifference. "A man takes no more thought about choosing a wife than he does in picking a head of wheat." Among the Kaffirs, says Fritsch (112) it may occur that a man has an inclination toward a particular girl; but he adds that "in such cases the suitor is obliged to pay several oxen more than is customary, and as he usually takes cattle more to heart than women, such cases are rare;" and though, when he has several wives, he may have a favorite, the attachment to her is shallow and transient, for she is at any moment liable to displacement by a new-comer. Among the Hottentots at Angra Pequena, when a man covets a girl he goes to her hut, prepares a cup of coffee and hands it to her without saying a word. If she drinks half of it, he knows the answer is Yes. "If she refuses to touch the coffee, the suitor is not specially grieved, but proceeds to another hut to try his luck again in the same way." (Ploss, I., 454.)

Of the Fijians Williams (148) says: "Too commonly there is no express feeling of connubial bliss, men speak of 'our women' and women of 'our men' without any distinctive preference being apparent." Catlin, speaking (70-71) of the matrimonial arrangements of the Pawnee Indians, says that daughters are held as legitimate merchandise, and, as a rule, accept the situation "with the apathy of the race." A man who advertised for a wife would hardly be accused of individual preference or anything else indicating love. From a remark made by George Gibbs (197) we may infer that the Indians of Oregon and Washington used to advertise for wives, in their own fashion:

"It is not unusual to find on the small prairies human figures rudely carved upon trees. These I have understood to have been cut by young men who were in want of wives, as a sort of practical intimation that they were in the market as purchasers."

It might be suggested that such a crude love-letter to the sex in general, as compared with one of our own love-letters to a particular girl, gives a fair idea of what Indian love is, compared with the love of civilized men and women.

SHALLOW PREDILECTION

Even where there is an appearance of predilection it is apt to be shallow and fragile. In the Jesuit Relations (XVIII., 129) we read how a Huron youth came to one of the missionaries and said he needed a wife to make his snow-shoes and clothes. "I am in love with a young girl," said he. "I beg you to call my relatives together and to consider whether she is suitable for me. If you decide that it is for my good, I will marry her; if not, I will follow your advice." Other young Indians used to come to the missionaries to ask them to find wives for them. I have been struck, in reading Indian love-stories, by the fact that their gist usually lies not in an exhibition of decided preference for one man but of violent aversion to another—some old and disagreeable suitor. It is well known, too, that among Indians, as among Australians, marriage was sometimes considered an affair of the tribe rather than of the individual; and we have some curious illustrations of the way in which various tribes of Indians would try to crush the germs of individual preference.

REPRESSION OF PREFERENCE

Thus Hunter relates (243) of the Missouri and Arkansas tribes that "It is considered disgraceful for a young Indian publicly to prefer one woman to another until he has distinguished himself either in war or in the chase." Should an Indian pay any girl, though he may have known her from childhood, special attention before he has won reputation as a warrior, "he would be sure to suffer the painful mortification of a rejection; he would become the derision of the warriors and the contempt of the squaws." In the Jesuit Relations (III., 73) we read of some of the Canadian Indians that