The laughter excited is of a rather more intellectual kind when the action of the white man presents itself as absurd, not merely because it rudely diverges from the customs of the natives, but because it involves something out of the range of their comprehension, and so appears incredible. It is then that the white man shows his superiority in evoking laughter: his arts, his apparatus—when like the photographic camera they do not excite fears—are apt to evoke incredulous laughter. A traveller in South Africa had learned some sentences of the speech of a tribe (the Sichuana language) from his man. He then wrote them down and read them off before the man. This simple fellow laughed “most heartily” when his white master told him that it was the marks he had made in the book which showed him what he was to say.[187] A child would pretty certainly join the savage in laughing at the idea of getting sounds out of the inert, stupid-looking word-symbols, if it were suddenly introduced to him in this way. When the white man’s doings are not absolutely new, he may expose himself to the laughter of these merry folk by the odd manner of them. One would like to know all the jokes which the natives of South Africa, of Polynesia, and the other abodes of the mirthful “Naturkind” have had over the dress, the gestures, and the speech of their white visitors. Yet this would be hard to get at. We do know, however, how they are wont to greet some of our highly civilised performances. This is the way in which some Tasmanian women behaved on a first introduction to the European manner of singing. They listened attentively while it lasted; then some applauded by loud shouts; others laughed to splitting, while the young girls, {240} no doubt more timid, remained silent.[188] This laughter was, presumably, more than the expression of a wild delight. Those who laughed may be supposed to have been the most susceptible to the absurdity of this unheard of manner of song. In the case of the closely allied art of dancing, we are distinctly told that our highly approved style may appear ridiculous to the savage onlooker. The Sumatrans, writes one authority, have very slow dances which are thought to be ludicrous by Europeans. Yet, funnily enough, they think our customary dances “to the full as ludicrous”. They compared our minuets to the fighting of two game cocks.[189] Did they also see a galop, one wonders, and if so, what did the lovers of slow dances say about this? The “refinements” of the arts of civilised men are ever apt to appear laughable to those lower down.