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whatever she acquires, go to their common household, and is 

 used by them in common, subject to the deduction of the 

 Veveni and other portions communistically distributed among- 

 various people. They have their meals together, except when 

 in olden days the man occasionally ate his food at the Duhu. 

 The two belong to each other exclusively in sexual matters, 

 though, of course, for adultery the crime and punishment are 

 much greater in the case of the woman. But it must be 

 noted that there was no opportunity for a married man to 

 enter into an intrigue without incurring the blame of public 

 opinion and without setting at naught his domestic peace. 

 And, as far as my knowledge goes, the unmarried men would 

 be very keen to find him out and to set in motion against him 

 all the adverse forces of offended public opinion for thus, 

 encroaching upon what they considered to be their own ex- 

 clusive right. In public the married men shun the other 

 sex even much more rigidly than the bachelors. 



Husband and wife sleep together round the same fire, 

 except, again, in those cases when a man slept in the Duhu 

 in order to observe sex taboos, or when the woman has her 

 period, or for some other reason. 



In the matter of marital authority there seems to be a 

 great independence on the part of both partners. I was. 

 unable to hear of, or to observe, any evidence that a man ever 

 tyrannized over or bullied his wife, neither do the men appear 

 to be often ''hen-pecked." During the many times I sat 

 and talked with natives in their houses I observed that the 

 women kept apart, especially if other men besides the owner 

 of the house were present. But if a woman approached there 

 was never the slightest sign of shyness or fear in her manner 

 towards her husband, and I never saw any one of them as 

 much as rebuked or spoken to unkindly by her husband. On 

 the contrary, there were present all the signs of friendly and 

 unconstrained relations between them. And this was, if any- 

 thing, more pronounced in the case of old couples. As to the 

 scope of real authority, i.e., of the limits within which a man 

 could impose his will upon a woman, I think that these were 

 very restricted. All the services required by a man from his 

 wife were strictly regulated by custom, and even the sphere 

 of their mutual personal contact was defined. Whether a 

 woman desired it or not, she was usually free from her 

 husband's presence, his bad tempers, and of his possibly 

 arbitrary wishes for the greater part of the day. 



The question arises to what extent is the mutual affection 

 and regard which undoubtedly obtains between the two 

 partners, due primarily to erotic love. It seems to be beyond 

 dispute that this feeling exists among the lower races, thougk. 



