I was especially interested in the description he gave of a peculiar ceremony common among the wildest Bushmen and the Yolloff tribe. My informant grew up and played with them a great deal when a child. He says the death of a young boy they consider an affront to the living--an affront which they never forgive. It is singular that among some of our Indian tribes a similar notion prevails. The friends meet around the corpse and exclaim, while they chant and sing and dance, in a high-pitched voice: "Why did you die? Were you too proud to stay with us? You thought yourself too good to stay with us. To whom do you leave all your things? We don't want them! Take them with you if you are so stuck up; we'll bury them with you!" They work themselves into a perfect fury, and one gets a whip and flogs the corpse until it is horribly mutilated. Then the few who have really been friends to the child in their crude way draw near and begin to sing: "Anasa yi. Anasa papa," which this native African assured me meant, as nearly as he could translate it-- "Find out how mother is. Find out how papa is." The curious identity of the name for father in this African dialect and our own he could not explain. Even while the relatives were thus speaking kindly to the departed child, others would come up with whips, and with blows spitefully exclaim: "Tell my father's sister I am happy. Speak to her for me." This they said, mocking the relatives for sending messages. What better proof is required of the origin of the peculiar custom of the negroes in our own Southland of sending communications by the dead? He also gave me new stories of Brother Conch, and a tale of a rabbit and a pitch-man. He says he has heard a savage tribe often sing to the beat of a peculiar drum, as they started to pillage and destroy a neighboring tribe, these words, which he could not translate: "Zo, whine, whine, Zo, bottom balleh. Zo, whine, whine, Zo, bottom balleh." Some of the tribes are followers of Mohammed. After they have broken their fast, they sing this hymn to their God: "Li li, e li li, Moo moo dooroo, soo moo li." I then sang for him a part of "Gawd bless dem Yankees, dey'll set me free," [Music: Gawd bless dem Yankees, dey'll set me free! 'Most done toil-in' heah! Leetle chiler-den, 'm ... 'm ... 'Most done toil-in' ... heah!] and when I came to the humming, which we all know is the marked peculiarity of the negro singing, he stopped me and said, "Whenever you hum that way it means 'Hush!' and among the tribes I have known it always comes in baby songs." He then sang this one, which a heathen woman used to sing to his little sister "Amber": "Amber in a wa, Keen yah feenyah ma, Amber in a bamboo carri, Amber eeka walloo. Um, um, um."