POLYGAMY AND WIFE-PURCHASE 129 
woman being promised, without being herself consulted, 
to the man who bids most for her, it is obviously right 
to protest. If it merely means that in accordance 
with local custom the man who is courting a girl must, 
if she is willing to marry him, pay to the family a sum 
mutually agreed upon, there is no more reason for 
objecting than there is in the matter of the dowry, 
customary in Europe. Whether the man, if the 
marriage comes off, pays money to the family or receives 
money from it, is in principle the same thing ; in either 
case there is a definite money transaction which has its 
origin in the social views of the period. What has 
to be insisted on, both among ourselves and among 
“ natives,” is that the money transaction must remain 
subordinate, and not so influence the personal choice 
that either the wife is bought, as in Africa, or the 
husband, as in Europe. What we have to do, then, is 
not to fight against the custom of wife-purchase, but 
to educate the natives up to seeing that they must not 
give the girl to the highest bidder, but to the suitor who 
can make her happy, and whom she is herself inclined 
to take. As a rule, indeed, the negro girls are not so 
wanting in independence as to let themselves be sold 
to any one who offers. Love, it is true, does not play 
the same part in marriage here as with us, for the child 
of nature knows nothing of the romantic, and marriages 
are usually decided on in the family council ; they do, 
however, as a rule, turn out happily. 
Most girls are married when they are fifteen, even 
those in the girls’ schools. Those in our mission school 
are mostly already engaged to some husband, and marry 
as soon as they leave school. They can even be pro- 
mised to a husband before they are born, as I learnt 
