ded. They may indeed attempt to
elope with another man more 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 wife-capturing 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 genuine, 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., Sec. 288) by citing Crantz, who says, concerning the
Eskimos, that when a damsel is asked in marriage, she

"directly falls