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

BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 231
even now the reflex revenge is speeding on its way to keep
the sure law that a tyrant is best embalmed in his own
blood. Here he is day by day despising our glorious
Gospel ; flattery, sickly flattery, is his mode of attempting
to spike our Gospel guns, and the glib tongue reveals a
hard old heart seared to it all. Preach on Love with a
capital letter, and by a wriggle he is out of the whole
subject in a moment—what does he, a polygamist, want
with the Love that passeth the love of women ?
King or
slave, this glibness of tongue is Africa's endless horror.
Wherever you move the wise old saw perfectly expresses
our longing : Kather a negro heart without words, than
negro words without heart.
(Later.)
Now let me try to tackle in cold ink this horror of
polygamy—a subject, alas, almost certain to incur the
vitiating touch of coarseness. We have already seen
all the Mushidi institutions built on the bedrock of
Nature's precedents among the animals. (Precedent, not
principle, remember, is the only law in Africa.) Here,
then, in his colossal system of polygamy, you see
only another instance of the Bantu curriculum in the
University of the Beasts. A sociologist far away in
England can work up a whole bookcase of plausible
data on such an ancient subject, toying with his pet-doll
theory before the study fire. But here, on the edge of
Lufira Valley, you frankly see polygamy cradled amongst
the zebras and antelopes. Thence, anon (and quite as
frankly), you see the same polygamy invade the native