turn his hand to do the husband's housework.

The sight of Brother Michel's family estate led the conversation for
some while upon the method and consequence of artificial kinship. Our
curiosity became extremely whetted; the brother offered to have the
whole of us adopted, and some two days later we became accordingly the
children of Paaaeua, appointed chief of Atuona. I was unable to be
present at the ceremony, which was primitively simple. The two Mrs.
Stevensons and Mr. Osbourne, along with Paaaeua, his wife, and an
adopted child of theirs, son of a shipwrecked Austrian, sat down to an
excellent island meal, of which the principal and the only necessary
dish was pig. A concourse watched them through the apertures of the
house; but none, not even Brother Michel, might partake; for the meal
was sacramental, and either creative or declaratory of the new
relationship. In Tahiti things are not so strictly ordered; when Ori and
I "made brothers," both our families sat with us at table, yet only he
and I, who had eaten with intention, were supposed to be affected by the
ceremony. For the adoption of an infant I believe no formality to be
required; the child is handed over by the natural parents, and grows up
to inherit the estates of the adoptive. Presents are doubtless
exchanged, as at all junctures of island life, social or international;
but I never heard of any banquet--the child's presence at the daily
board perhaps sufficing. We may find the rationale in the ancient
Arabian idea that a common diet makes a common blood, with its
derivative axiom that "he is the father who gives the child its morning
draught." In the Marquesan practice, the sense would thus be evanescent;
from the Tahitian, a mere survival, it will have entirely fled. An
interesting parallel will probably occur to many of my readers.

What is the nature of the obligation assumed at such a festival? It will
vary with the characters of those engaged, and with the circumstances of
the case. Thus it would be absurd to take too seriously our adoption at
Atuona. On the part of Paaaeua it was an affair of social ambition;
when he agreed to receive us in his family the man had not so much as
seen us, and knew only that we were inestimably rich and travelled in a
floating palace. We, upon our side, ate of his baked meats with no true
_animus affiliandi_, but moved by the single sentiment of curiosity. The
affair was formal, and a matter of parade, as when in Eur