ong to see the moonlight gleaming silvery white over the wide
veldt and mysterious sea of bush, and watch the lines of game
travelling down the ridges to the water. The ruling passion
is strong in death, they say, and my heart was dead that night.
But, independently of my trouble, no man who has for forty years
lived the life I have, can with impunity go coop himself in this
prim English country, with its trim hedgerows and cultivated
fields, its stiff formal manners, and its well-dressed crowds.
He begins to long -- ah, how he longs! -- for the keen breath
of the desert air; he dreams of the sight of Zulu impis breaking
on their foes like surf upon the rocks, and his heart rises up
in rebellion against the strict limits of the civilized life.

Ah! this civilization, what does it all come to? For forty years
and more I lived among savages, and studied them and their ways;
and now for several years I have lived here in England, and have
in my own stupid manner done my best to learn the ways of the
children of light; and what have I found? A great gulf fixed?
No, only a very little one, that a plain man's thought may spring
across. I say that as the savage is, so is the white man, only
the latter is more inventive, and possesses the faculty of combination;
save and except also that the savage, as I have known him, is
to a large extent free from the greed of money, which eats like
a cancer into the heart of the white man. It is a depressing
conclusion, but in all essentials the savage and the child of
civilization are identical. I dare say that the highly civilized
lady reading this will smile at an old fool of a hunter's simplicity
when she thinks of her black bead-bedecked sister; and so will
the superfine cultured idler scientifically eating a dinner at
his club, the cost of which would keep a starving family for
a week. And yet, my dear young lady, what are those pretty things
round your own neck? -- they have a strong family resemblance,
especially when you wear that _very_ low dress, to the savage woman's
beads. Your habit of turning round and round to the sound of
horns and tom-toms, your fondness for pigments and powders, the
way in which you love to subjugate yourself to the rich warrior
who has captured you in marriage, and the quickness with which
your taste in feathered head-dresses varies -- all these things
suggest touches of kinship; and you remember that in the fundamental
principles of your natur