It is true that the widowers also in some cases subjected themselves to penance; but usually they made it very much easier for themselves than for the widows. In his _Lettres sur le Congo_ (152) Edouard Dupont relates that a man who has lost his wife and wants to show grief shaves his head, blackens himself, _stops work_, and sits in front of his chimbeque several days. His neighbors meanwhile feed him [no fasting for _him_!], and at last a friend brings him a calabash of malofar and tells him "stop mourning or you will die of starvation." "It does not happen often," Dupont adds, "that the advice is not promptly followed." Selfish utilitarianism does not desert the savage even at the grave of his wife. An amusing illustration of the shallowness of aboriginal grief where it seems "truly touching" may be found in an article by the Rev. F. McFarlane on British New Guinea.[125] Scene: "A woman is being buried. The husband is lying by the side of the grave, apparently in an agony of grief; he sobs and cries as if his heart would break." Then he jumps into the grave and whispers into the ears of the corpse--what? a last farewell? Oh, no! "He is asking the spirit of his wife to go with him when he goes fishing, and make him successful also when he goes hunting, or goes to battle," etc.; his last request being, "_And please don't be angry if I get another wife_!" The simple truth is that in their grief, as in everything else, savages are nothing but big children, crying one moment, laughing the next. Whatever feelings they may have are shallow and without devotion. If the widows of Mandans, Arawaks, Patagonians, etc., do not marry until a year after the death of their husband this is not on account of affectionate grief, but, as we have seen, because they are not allowed to. Where custom prescribes a different course, they follow that with the same docility. When a Kansas or Osage wife finds, on the return of a war-party, that she is a widow, she howls dismally, but forthwith seeks an avenger in the shape of a new husband. "After the death of a husband, the sooner a squaw marries again, the greater respect and regard she is considered to show for his memory." (Hunter, 246.) The Australian custom for women, especially widows, is to mourn by scratching the face and branding the body. As for the grief itself, its quality may be inferred from the fact that these women sit day after day by the grave or platform, howling their monotonous dirge, but, as soon as they are allowed to pause for a meal they indulge in the merriest pranks. (K.E. Jung, 111.) MOURNING FOR ENTERTAINMENT