xx NOTES ON LIFE OF THE AFRICAN NATIVE 197 



other lips and other eyes, and finally decide to take 

 a second wife. The first wife may feel the pangs 

 of jealousy and the humiliation of being superseded 

 in her husband's affections by another, but these 

 trifles she will have to look at philosophically, or to 

 put it expressively, if vulgarly, she will have to 

 ' lump it.' For his second wife, our amorous native 

 must build a new hut, and to her he must give a bed 

 of her own, while she provides a mat. Now, he 

 chiefly confines his attentions to hunting and fishing, 

 and making expeditions into the forest for honey, 

 bees-wax and rubber, leaving his wives to do most 

 of the manual labour in the shamba. 



Bye and bye, if he is well-to-do, he may decide to 

 add another wife to his household, and from this 

 event, we may roughly date the beginning of his 

 declining years. His physical powers begin to 

 wane, and he passes his time in the village 

 gossiping, very much as the aged English villager 

 does in the village inn. By this time he has a 

 family of one, two, or three children, large families 

 being an exception, and these children, especially 

 the girls, assist their mother in the housework. 

 Sometimes, he will make little trips to adjacent 

 villages and exchange a fowl for some tobacco 

 or for seed for his garden. With such trifles he 

 whiles away the time. 



At thirty-five to forty he is an old man, and then 



