191 THE OUWLV OF BOWING. 



But \\\\y do we raise our liats in bowing ? The 

 unsophisticated savage in his native liaunts sel- 

 dom wears a liat at all ; and when lie does, lie is 

 not in the liabit (»f lifting it gracefully to the 

 ladies of his tribe whenever he meets them. Mis 

 recognition of the fairer sex is far more likely to 

 assume the ungallant form of soundly kicking 

 them, a practice not wbolly extinct even in the 

 placid bosom of our modern IJritish civilization. 

 Nevertheless, even the practice of lifting the hat 

 is in itself an exactly similar survival from an 

 early savage propitiatory custom. For, when one 

 savage conquers another, whether he kills him or 

 not, the first thing he does is to strip the body, 

 alive or dead, of all its weapons, armor, and orna- 

 ments. Even in the Homeric poems, when a 

 noble Greek slays a noble Trojan, he proceeds 

 immediately with heroic utilitarianism to loot and 

 strip the bleeding corpse ; when he takes one 

 alive, and makes a slave of him, he snatches the \ 

 golden trinkets from his neck and appropriates 

 his personal property generally as the spoils of 

 war and the perquisite of the conqueror. To 

 this day, when a Zulu or an Afghan catches poor 

 Tommy Atkins straggling incautiously from the 

 line of march, he takes over the red tunic and the 

 belt and haversack as his own trophy of the inglo- 

 rious victory. Now, just as the savage throws 

 himself on his back or falls on his face to symbol- 



