"
Barrington concludes with these words: "This little anecdote I have
given as the young man related it to me and perhaps I have _lost much
of its simplicity_." It is very much to be feared that he has. I have
marked with, exclamation points the most absurdly impossible parts of
the tale as idealized and embellished by Barrington. The Australian
never told him that he "gazed motionless" on the "enchanting beauty"
of the girl's form or that his "revenge softened into love;" he never
clasped her in his arms, nor "vowed eternal constancy." The girl never
dreamt of saying that his pity gained her love, or of excusing her
brother for doing what all Australian men do. These sentimental
touches are gratuitous additions of Barrington; native Australians do
not even clasp each other in their arms, and they are as incapable of
vowing eternal constancy as of comparing Herbert Spencer's philosophy
with Schopenhauer's. Yet on the strength of such dime novel rubbish an
anthropologist assures us that savages are capable of feeling pure
romantic love! The kernel of truth in the above tale reduces itself to
this, that the young man whose sister was stolen intended to take
revenge by killing the abductor, but that on seeing his sister he
concluded to marry her. These savages, as we have seen, always act
thus, killing the enemy's women only when unable to carry them off.
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