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

BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 249
(l5^ December.)
To-day I tumbled headlong down one of the pitfalls of
Court etiquette by daring to wear a pair of glasses. An
old Mutoni lectured me that on approaching such a King
of Timbuctoo a strong point of etiquette is to doff, not
your hat but your spectacles, for such a man is called
" Mr. Four-eyes " and is a horror. So, in spite of any
little visual defect, you must climb down to the normal
use of two eyes, not four. Nor may you even screw a
monocle into your eye, for then your name is " Mr. One
Eye" (why not "Mr. Three"?). The method in this
madness is a real peep into the dark chamber of the
negro brain, for he detests eye-glasses with a reason.
And thus 'it runs. In Africa you must not only set a
watch upon the door of your lips, but must also be
inscrutably careful as to your tell-tale face, for with the
wary eye of an experienced angler the African can easily
fish news out of the two deep liquid pools of your eye-
balls. To him eyes speak all languages under the sun,
yea, they talk better than tongues ;
for if the eye says one
thing and the tongue another, then will he plump for the
verdict of the eye. Hence this antipathy to **Mr. Four-
eyes." To don these glasses before a chief is a traitor's
act, for are you not thereby putting yourself as far away
from his ferret eyes as you are bringing him nearer to
your own? The insinuating logic of the thing is so
convincing that you frankly own up to having been un-
pardonably rude in wearing spectacles. What could be
more crushing than the ancient African rule, " Distrust a
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