William Henry Furness

“ When a man comes back from a long, and perhaps dangerous, expedition, he does not fall into the arms of his family amid tears of joy and welcome; but he walks up the notched log and stalks along the public veranda, looking neither to the right nor to the left until he deposits his burden opposite his own door, and there he sits down, lights a cigarette, and tries to act and look as if he had just come in from the rice-field after a day’s work. ”

“ By his very nature, then, is it not every man's own business to know what the world is busy about, and to take an interest in the world's affairs, because they are his own? Is it not a truth written in the constitution of every individual man, the well-known declaration of the Roman slave: 'I am a man, and I hold nothing human foreign to me?' And does not our common Christianity teach over and over again in a thousand ways, that we are all members one of another, and that no man lives for himself? ”

“ They cannot starve, there are no wild beasts or snakes to harm them, and should they tear their clothes, nature mends them, leaving only a scar to show the patch; what matters it if they sleep under the high, star-powdered ceiling of their foster mother’s nursery, or curled up on mats beneath their father’s thatch? There is no implication here that parents are not fond of their children; on the contrary, they love them so much that they see their own children in all children. It is the ease of life and its surroundings which have atrophied the emotion of parental love. ”

“ In the jungle there is no death, the leaves fall while they are still green, and in a night, lo! new ones take their place; an ancient tree falls, but the mighty trunk does not lie arid and stiff to be slowly covered with pale leathery lichens; hardly has it touched the ground before it is covered with a translucent shroud of tender green, which seems but a renewal and continuation of its own life; and before the burning sun shining through the gap can scorch the delicate orchids, the gap is closed by a new eager growth and a young tree springs from the earth upturned by the broken roots. ”

“ He has come hither as to the very temple of Freedom, and he finds coiled up under her very altar, as its guardian, the serpent of Oppression, and already its deadly hiss has rung in his surprised ear.
American Slavery has much to answer for; but if it adds this to the mountain of its iniquities, if it is the cause why the hope of bleeding and fettered Europe is blasted, if it break the noble heart of Hungary's devoted servant and chief, and more than all, if it cause him to falter in the cause of universal humanity, what tongue now silent will not join in execrating it? ”

“ The women catch the excitement of the fierce, desperate paddling; they stand up to the work, their jet-black hair streams over their shoulders, their tawny bodies sway with the boat as they dash from their paddles the ‘tender, curving lines of creamy spray.’ The men shout in triumph or laugh in defeat; and even the old crones cackle and urge on the youths to the sport. The scene is idyllic; there is nothing to revolt, everything to charm. Careless, untamed life amid a tropical jungle is to be seen at its very fairest on one of these Tuba-fishings among the Kenyahs. ”

“ The Pimlingai again retreated to the background, and Gyeiga, sitting cross-legged beside the corpse, placed two large pearl shells upon his chest, talking to him in a pleading, plaintive voice and looking directly in his horribly disfigured face. The old women in the listening and sympathising crowd, from time to time seemed to mutter an approval of her sentiments, and the wrinkled, parchment cheeks of many of them were wet with tears. Then she arose and brought two more equally fine shells from the house and placed them on top of the others with another short speech to the corpse. ”

“ They are no exception to the rule that all untutored minds, living in constant communion with any awful aspect of Nature, be it gigantic mountains, a waste of [Pg 6] waters, or an illimitable jungle, are saturated with superstitions; every pool, every tree, every rock is the home of an evil spirit, and all mysterious noises in the forest are ghostly whisperings. Everywhere are signs and omens to warn man of danger or direct his course; theirs is a life where no schooling is so vital as the ability to read aright the "sermons in stones, books in the running brooks." ”

“ We were in the very heart of the Bornean jungle, guests, in the house of a barbarous ‘savage’ and bloodthirsty ‘head-hunter,’—but, these terms, when applied at that moment to our host, what misnomers! Could contrast be more emphatic than the perfect peacefulness of our surroundings, and the thought that a man as benignant and hospitable as Aban Avit should cherish as his highest aim in life to add every year to that cluster of human heads hanging from the rafters just above us, and gently swaying in the heat ascending from the flames? ”

“ Is it not here then, in an untutored tropic island, that the realization is to be found of the Spartan ideal? Somebody’s children are always about the houses and to the fore in all excitements, and never did I see them roughly handled or harshly treated. As soon as they are old enough they must win their own way, and, if boys, at a very early age, they make the pabai or failu—the man’s house—their home by night and day, sharing the cooked food of their elders, or living on raw coconuts, and chewing betel incessantly. ”

“ With such facts as I began with mentioning, glaring in our faces, sickening our very hearts with horror and indignation, who will say that public affairs may not interfere with us, with our very lives, yes, and with what ought to be dearer to us than our lives? Let them take their own course, as you say. And then, as surely as we breathe, bad men will gain the ascendency,—ignorant, unprincipled, ambitious men, despisers of human life and human rights, ready to shed blood to any extent to gratify the devilish lust of power. Into such hands will public affairs fall. ”