we do not manifest any
very profound amazement. "There's that confounded Superman again," we
mutter, if we happen to be busy. "I wonder what stunt he's going to do
now!"

A consideration of the above beautiful fable may go a little way toward
explaining the supposed native stolidity in the face of the white man's
wonders. A few years ago some misguided person brought a balloon to
Nairobi. The balloon interested the white people a lot, but everybody
was chiefly occupied wondering what the natives would do when they saw
THAT! The natives did not do anything. They gathered in large numbers,
and most interestedly watched it go up, and then went home again. But
they were not stricken with wonder to any great extent. So also with
locomotives, motor cars, telephones, phonographs-any of our modern
ingenuities. The native is pleased and entertained, but not astonished.
"Stupid creature, no imagination," say we, because our pride in showing
off is a wee bit hurt.

Why should he be astonished? His mental revolution took place when he
saw the first match struck. It is manifestly impossible for any one to
make fire instantaneously by rubbing one small stick. When for the first
time he saw it done, he was indeed vastly astounded. The immutable had
been changed. The law had been transcended. The impossible had been
accomplished. And then, as logical sequence, his mind completed the
syllogism. If the white man can do this impossibility, why not all the
rest? To defy the laws of nature by flying in the air or forcing great
masses of iron to transport one, is no more wonderful than to defy
them by striking a light. Since the white man can provedly do one, what
earthly reason exists why he should not do anything else that hits his
fancy? There is nothing to get astonished at.

This does not necessarily mean that the native looks on the white man
as a god. On the contrary, your African is very shrewd in the reading of
character. But indubitably white men possess great magic, uncertain in
its extent.

That is as far as I should care to go, without much deeper acquaintance,
into the attitude of the native mind toward the whites. A superficial
study of it, beyond the general principals I have enunciated, discloses
many strange contradictions. The native respects the white man's warlike
skill, he respects his physical prowess, he certainly acknowledges
tacitly his moral superiority in the right to command. In case of
dispute he likes the