Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 145
her neighbour's child. Here, then, comes the hell-born
thought. Now is her chance. So, dissolving in philan-
thropic smiles, she hypocritically offers to nurse baby in
the mother's absence—consequence : murder. The human
fiend rubs into the gums of baby the virus of a loathsome
and nameless disease, and the cherub dies a horrible death.
Even the local black poet is horrified at a thing of this
sort, and composes a Luban dirge which I translate :
"What is a baby's dying groan
To the barren who have none of their own?"
Decidedly, we are in Luvaleland. The young boys
about here are called the men, and the elders are called
the "old boys," and no wonder. For these youngsters
begin to live at full gallop when they are more babies
than boys, and thus early sowing the wind they reap a
roaring whirlwind : at twenty years of age they are
weak and can scarcely trot, much less gallop, without
the spur of stimulants. Borrowed beer, and preferably
borrowed than bought. Sneaked tobacco, and the more
he sneaks the pleasanter the smoke. Hemp paid for,
ay, paid with the uttermost farthing, for this last lashes
him with passion. And so the three wicks of the lamp
of life soon burn out in blazes, the brain, the blood, and
the breath. " Soon ripe, soon rotten," is the proverb
that tells the whole story, for if he must be a man at
fourteen then he is sure of being a boy at thirty. An
African lad knows everything too early, and therefore
can learn nothing when it is too late.
lO