/WMOK" is an innovation which I do not recommend. It consists 

 £*> in letting go when things get too bad, and doing damage with 

 tongue, hands and feet. It is the tantrum carried to its logical con- 

 clusion. I saw one instance where a hen-pecked husband "ran 

 amok" and killed or wounded seventeen people before he himself was 

 killed. It is the national, and therefore the honourable mode of com- 

 mitting suicide among the natives of Celebes, and is the fashionable 

 way of escaping from their difficulties. A man cannot pay, he is taken 

 for a slave, or has gambled away his wife or child into slavery, he 

 sees no way of recovering what he has lost, and becomes desperate. 

 He will not put up with such cruel wrongs, but will be revenged on 

 mankind and die like a hero. He grasps his knife, and the next 

 moment draws out the weapon and stabs a man to the heart. He 

 runs on with bloody kris in his hand, stabbing every one he meets. 

 "Amok! Amok!" then resounds through the streets. Spears, knses, 

 knives, guns and clubs are brought out against him. He rushes 

 madly forward, kills all he can — men, women and children — and 

 dies, overwhelmed by numbers, amid all the excitement of a battle. 



—ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, 

 in " The Malay Archipelago." 



