EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. z 9: 



' My lady, I place myself at your feet ; ' to which she will reply, ' I kiss 

 your hand, sir.' " 



From what has gone before, such origins and such characters of 

 forms of address might, indeed, be anticipated. Along with other 

 ways of propitiating the victor, the master, and the ruler, will naturally 

 come speeches which, beginning with confessions of defeat by verbal 

 assumption of its attitude, will develop into varied phrases acknowl- 

 edging the state of servitude. The implication, therefore, is that forms 

 of address in general, descending as they do from these originals, will 

 express, clearly or vaguely, ownership by, or subjection to, the person 

 addressed. 



Of propitiatory speeches, there are some which, instead of describ- 

 ing the prostration entailed by defeat, describe the resulting state of 

 being at the mercy of the person addressed. One of the strangest of 

 these occurs among the cannibal Tupis. While on the one hand a 

 warrior shouts to his enemy, " May every misfortune come upon thee, 

 my meat ! " on the other hand the speech required from the captive 

 Hans Stade on approaching a dwelling was, " I, your food, have come." 

 A verbal surrender of life takes other forms in other places. It is 

 asserted that, during ancient times in Russia, petitions to the czar 

 commenced with the words, " Do not order our heads to be cut off, O 

 mighty lord, for presuming to address you, but hear us ! " And, though 

 I do not get direct verification for this statement, it receives indirect 

 support from the still-current sa}'ing, " Whoso goes to the czar risks 

 his head," as also from the lines 



"My soul is God's, 

 My land is mine, 

 My head's the Czar's, 

 My back is thine ! " 



Then, again, instead of professing to live only by permission of the 

 superior, actual or pretended, who is spoken to, we find the speaker 

 professing to be personally a chattel of his, or to be holding property 

 at his disposal, or both. Africa, Polynesia, and Europe, furnish exam- 

 ples. " When a stranger enters the house of a Serracolet (inland ne- 

 gro), he goes out and says, ' White man, my house, my wife, my chil- 

 dren, belong to thee.' ' In the Sandwich Islands a chief, asked respect- 

 ing the ownership of a house or canoe possessed b} r him, replies, " It is 

 yours and mine." In France, in the fifteenth century, a complimentary 

 speech made by an abbe" on his knees to the queen when visiting a 

 monastery was, " We resign and offer up the abbey with all that is in 

 it, our bodies, as our goods." And at the present time in Spain, where 

 politeness requires that anything admired by a visitor shall be offered 

 to him, " the correct place of dating [a letter] from should be ... . 

 from this your house, wherever it is ; you must not say from this 



