suited to their age, but they do so at the risk of cruel injury and probable death. The wives have to do all the drudgery; they get only such food as the husbands do not want, and on the slightest suspicion of intrigue they are maltreated horribly. Causes enough surely for their resistance to obligatory marriage. This resistance is a frank expression of genuine unwillingness, or aversion, and has nothing in common with real coyness, which signifies the mere semblance of unwillingness on the part of a woman who is at least half-willing. Such expressions as Goldsmith's "the coy maid, half willing to be pressed," and Dryden's

When the kind nymph would coyness feign,
And hides but to be found again,

indicate the nature of true coyness better than any definitions. There are no "coy looks," no "feigning" in the actions of an Australian girl about to be married to a man who is old enough to be her grandfather. The "cold disdain" is real, not assumed, and there is no "dissemblance of feminine affection."

CAPTURING WOMEN

The same reasoning applies to the customs attending wifecapturing in general, which has prevailed in all parts of the world and still prevails in some regions. To take one or two instances of a hundred that might be cited from books of travel in all parts of the world: Columbus relates that the Caribs made the capture of women the chief object of their expeditions. The California Indians worked up their warlike spirit by chanting a song the substance of which was, "let us go and carry off girls" (Waitz, IV., 242). Savages everywhere have looked upon women as legitimate spoils of war, desirable as concubines and drudges. Now even primitive women are attached to their homes and relatives, and it is needless to say their resistance to the enemy who has just slain their father and brothers and is about to carry them off to slavery, is gen uine, and has no more trace of coyness in it than the actions

of an American girl who resists the efforts of unknown kidnappers to drag her from her home.

But besides real capture of women there has existed, and still exists in many countries, what is known as sham-capture-a custom which has puzzled anthropologists sorely. Herbert Spencer illustrates it (P. S., I., § 288) by citing Crantz, who says, concerning the Eskimos, that when a damsel is asked in marriage, she

"directly falls into the greatest apparent consternation, and runs out of doors tearing her hair; for single women always affect the utmost bashfulness and aversion to any proposal of marriage, lest they should lose their reputation for modesty.'

Spencer also quotes Burckhardt, who describes how the bride among Sinai Arabs defends herself with stones, even though she does not dislike the lover; "for according to custom, the more she struggles, bites, kicks, cries, and strikes, the more she is applauded ever after by her own companions.' During the procession to the husband's camp " decency obliges her to cry and sob most bitterly." Among the Araucanians of Chili, according to Smith (215) "it is a point of honor with the bride to resist and struggle, however willing she may be."

While conceding that "the manners of the inferior races do not imply much coyness," Spencer, nevertheless, thinks 66 we cannot suppose coyness to be wholly absent." He holds that in the cases just cited coyness is responsible for the resistance of the women, and he goes so far as to make this coyness" an important factor," in accounting for the custom of marriage by capture which has prevailed among so many peoples in all parts of the world. Westermarck declares (388) that this suggestion can scarcely be disproved, and Grosse (105) echoes his judgment. To me, on the contrary, it seems that these distinguished sociologists are putting the cart before the horse. They make the capture a sequence of "coyness," whereas in truth the coyness (if it may be so called) is a result of capture. The custom of wife capture can be easily explained without calling in the aid of what we have seen to be so questionable a thing as primitive

female coyness. Savages capture wives as the most coveted spoils of war. They capture them, in other instances, because polygamy and female infanticide have disturbed the equilibrium of the sexes, thus compelling the young men to seek wives elsewhere than in their own tribes; and the same result is brought about (in Australia, for instance), by the old men's habit of appropriating all the young women by a system of exchange, leaving none for the young men, who, therefore, either have to persuade the married women to elope at the risk of their lives-or else are compelled to steal wives elsewhere. In another very large number of cases the men stole brides-willing or unwilling-to avoid paying their parents for

them.

THE COMEDY OF MOCK CAPTURE

Thus the custom of real capture is easily accounted for. What calls for an explanation is the sham capture and resistance in cases where both the parents and the bride are perfectly willing. Why should primitive maidens who, as we have seen, are rather apt than not to make amorous advances, repel their suitors so violently in these instances of mock capture? Are they, after all, coy-more coy than civilized maidens? To answer this question let us look at one of Spencer's witnesses more carefully. The reason Crantz gives for the Eskimo women's show of aversion to marriage is that they do it, "lest they lose their reputation for modesty." Now modesty of any kind is a quality unknown to Eskimos. Nansen, Kane, Hayes, and other explorers have testified that the Eskimos of both sexes take off all their clothes in their warm subterranean homes. Captain Beechey has described their obscene dances, and it is well-known that they consider it a duty to lend their wives and daughters to guests. Some of the native tales collected by Rink (236-37; 405) indicate most unceremonious modes of courtship and nocturnal frolics, which do not stop even at incest. To suppose that women so utterly devoid of moral sensibility could, of their own accord and actuated by modesty and bashfulness manifest such a coy aversion to marriage that force has to be resorted to, is mani

festly absurd. In attributing their antics to modesty, Crantz made an error into which so many explorers have fallen-that of interpreting the actions of savages from the point of view of civilization-an error more pardonable in an unsophisticated traveller of the eighteenth century than in a modern sociologist.

If we must therefore reject Herbert Spencer's inference as to the existence of primitive coyness and its consequences, how are we to account for the comedy of mock capture? Several writers have tried to crack the nut. Sutherland (I., 200) holds that sham capture is not a survival of real capture, but "the festive symbolism of the contrast in the character of the sexes-courage in the man and shyness in the woman' -a fantastic suggestion which does not call for discussion, since, as we know, the normal primitive woman is anything but shy. Abercromby (I., 454) is another writer who believes that sham capture is not a survival of real capture, but merely a result of the innate general desire on the part of the men to display courage-a view which dodges the one thing that calls for an explanation-the resistance of the women. Grosse indulges in some curious antics (105-108). First he asks: "Since real capture is everywhere an exception and is looked on as punishable, why should the semblance of capture have ever become a general and approved custom?" Then he asks, with a sneer, why sociology should be called upon to answer such questions anyhow; and a moment later he, nevertheless, attempts an answer, on Spencerian lines. Among inferior races, he remarks, women are usually coveted as spoils of war. The captured women become the wives or concubines of the warriors and thus represent, as it were, trophies of their valor. Is it not, therefore, inevitable that the acquisition of a wife by force should be looked on, among warlike races, as the most honorable way of getting her, nay, in course of time, as the only one worthy of a warrior? But since, he continues, not all the men can get wives in that way, even among the rudest tribes, these other men consoled themselves with investing the peaceful home-taking of a bride also with the show of an honorable capture.

In other words, Grosse declares on one page that it is absurd to derive approved sham capture from real capture because real capture is everywhere exceptional only and is always considered punishable; yet two pages later he argues that sham capture is derived from real capture because the latter is so honorable! As a matter of fact, among the lowest races known, wife-stealing is not considered honorable. Regarding the Australians, Curr states distinctly (I., 108) that it was not encouraged because it was apt to involve a whole tribe in war for one man's sake. Among the North American Indians, on the other hand, where, as we saw in the chapter on Honorable Polygamy, a wife-stealer is admired by both men and women, sham capture does not prevail. Grosse's argument, therefore, falls to the ground.

WHY THE WOMEN RESIST

Prior to all these writers Sir John Lubbock advanced (98) still another theory of capture, real and sham. Believing that men once had all their wives in common, he declares that "capture, and capture alone, could originally give a man the right to monopolize a woman to the exclusion of his fellow-clansmen; and that hence, even after all necessity for actual capture had long ceased, the symbol remained; capture having, by long habit, come to be received as a necessary preliminary to marriage." This theory has the same shortcoming as the others. While accounting for the capture, it does not explain the resistance of the women. In real capture they had real reasons for kicking, biting, and howling, but why should they continue these antics in cases of sham capture? Obviously another factor came into play here, which has been strangely overlooked-parental persuasion or command. Among savages a father owns his daughter as absoIntely as his dog; he can sell or exchange her at pleasure; in Australia, "swapping" daughters or sisters is the commonest mode of marriage. Now, stealing brides, or eloping to avoid having to pay for them, is of frequent occurrence everywhere among uncivilized races. To protect themselves against such