AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 



seriously, he was unconscious of the human signifi- 

 cance of beings and institutions belonging to a 

 foreign country or even to a class other than his own. 

 His own kind he treated as complete and under- 

 standable human creatures. All others were merely 

 objective. As we, to a certain extent, happened to 

 fall in the former category, he was as pleasant to us 

 as possible — that is, he was pleasant to us in his 

 way, but had not insight enough to guess at how to 

 be pleasant to us in our way. But as soon as he got 

 out of his own class, or what he conceived to be such, 

 he considered all people as "outsiders. " He did not 

 credit them with prejudices to rub, with feelings to 

 hurt, indeed hardly with ears to overhear. Provided 

 his subject was an "outsider" he had not the 

 slightest hesitancy in saying exactly what he thought 

 about any one, anywhere, always in his high, clear 

 English voice, no matter what the time or occasion. 

 As a natural corollary he always rebuffed beggars 

 and the like brutally; and was always quite sublimely 

 doing little things that thoroughly shocked our sense 

 of the other fellow's rights as a human being. In all 

 this he did not mean to be cruel nor inconsiderate. 

 It was just the way he was built; and it never 

 entered his head that "such people" had ears and 

 brains. 



In the rest of the ship's company were a dozen or 



38 



