The Taiyal seemed to think that some particularly powerful _Ottofu_ was connected with silver coins. Perhaps the “White Fathers,” and also the Chinese and Japanese, used these shining pieces to draw down the _Ottofu_ of long-departed ancestors; hence had they waxed mighty. That such _Ottofu_ pieces might be used as media of exchange between different tribes, when these were not actively at war with each other--this was comprehensible; but that such should be needed, or conceivably ever used, between members of the same tribe or nation--this was not comprehensible. “Surely man does not kill meat for himself alone, when his brothers, too, are hungry; nor does a woman grow millet for her own children alone, when the children of other women are crying for food.” Nor could I ever quite make my savage friends realize the blessings of civilization in the matters of the economic system, any more than of the social. They could only comprehend that among the enlightened ones of the world it was somehow tabu for one man to have as many shining pieces as another, or as much meat and drink, as good a house to shelter him from the wind, or as much fuel to make fire in the rainy season, as another, that somehow the shining _Ottofu_ pieces brought these blessings. But just why was it tabu for one man to have more than another? They were much puzzled, until at last one Taiyal man suggested that no doubt the White God-descended Ones knew, in their wisdom, which of their brothers were most worthy, most noble and holy; and to the most holy was awarded the largest share of the _Ottofu_ pieces. And still I am wondering what if the speculations of my savage friends had been correct--what sort of a Europe should I be living in to-day? How would it contrast with the Europe that is? When my friends learned of the tabu connected with the shining pieces, they wished to hear more of the tabus of the Great Ones. Were these the same as their own: tabus that surrounded young men and maidens, which prevented the latter from hearing an indelicate word or seeing a coarse gesture, that prevented the marriage of too near relations, that---- “Yes, yes,” I hurried to assent, “among the better classes all these tabus are observed.” “But,” my interlocutors interrupted, “what is meant by classes, and, if there is more than one class among the same people, why should the young girls of one class be protected more than those of another?”