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

BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 239
aperture the porridge is pushed home, baby the while
nearly kicking his little feet off as the alarming alterna-
tive to howling. This ventral distension is finally so
alarming that they must leave ofi" on the plea of incapacity,
the trouble being not too much porridge but too little
baby -boy. Yet all this is mere dessert, for, to the
cannibal, nothing can compensate for " God's own sacred
way of giving milk "—his mother s breast. Of course,
they bathe the rogue, but the bath is not such an affair of
immense and intricate pomp as in petted England :
with
cold water in the cold air they tone up the small black
body to play the Luban tune.
Now, however, that the little one has toed the tribal
line and produced this terrible tooth, the father feels as
tall as the Eiffel Tower, and he declares his son "justified."
The technical term for this justification is the old Bible
one, " I will give him the white stone," and this Lupemba
is the same word for the squaring of any outstanding
account—not a bad idea of justification for a man-eater.
The ridiculous Mama now runs with the tide and insists
that the tooth is a prize sample : in fact, she so hugs
Master Tom Thumb that when I last saw him he was in
a state of suspended animation. This, then, is the sort of
christening of a young cannibal, the tribal test being one
of tuskers. Yet they sell their bonnie bairns for a mere
song, that father with cold glittering eyes coveting calico
in exchange for his own flesh and blood—fancy a being
wearing a warm human skin bartering his own blood
and bone ! You
can cudgel your brains for a reason,