In writing about Fijian
friendships our author says (117):
"The high attainments which constitute friendship are known
to very few.... Full-grown men, it is true, will walk about
together, hand in hand, with boyish kindliness, or meet with
hugs and embraces; but their love, though specious, is
hardly real."
Obviously the keen-eyed missionary here had in mind the distinction
between sentimentality and sentiment. Sentimentality of a most
extraordinary kind is also found in the attitude of sons toward
parents. A Fijian considered it a mark of affection to club an aged
parent (157), and Williams has seen the breast of a ferocious savage
heave and swell with strong emotion on bidding a temporary farewell to
his aged father, whom he afterward strangled (117). Such are the
emotions of barbarians--shallow, fickle, capricious--as different from
our affection as a brook which dries up after every shower is from the
deep and steady current of a river which dispenses its beneficent
waters even in a drought.
FIJIAN LOVE-POEMS
In his article on Fijian poetry, referred to in the chapter on
Coyness, Sir Arthur Gordon informs us that among the "sentimental"
class of poems "there are not a few which are licentious, and many
more which, though not open to that reproach, are coarse and indecent
in their plain-spokenness.
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