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

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CHAPTER XIII
Black Suffragettes
JV
'HEREIN it is clearly and con-
a worm will turn,
sistently demonstrated that even
{lOth July.)
OKE executions of women, which means more
putrefying skulls and clouds of blue-bottle flies.
Skulls heaped on long rustic tables, skulls hanging
up on trees like hat-pegs, skulls with yawning mouths that
would not shut even in death. This Bluebeard business,
remember, means hard detective work, and the Emperor
spends sleepless nights raiding his own harems. Five
hundred (and a fraction) wives and not a padlock in the
land. It is on this sorry score blood runs in torrents,
for the paramours are legion, and often the true, because
prior, husbands of the stolen women. Mushidi knows all
this and more, knows he must keep running to the red,
reckless expedient of killing even on suspicion. For owing
to the ramifications of this polygamic mob of wives and
concubines, it is now easily evident that even Mushidi has
outwitted Mushidi. It has become his nightmare this,
for how is he to order his house in the severe sense
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