The latter’s manners, I think, must have been softened by his sojourn in the States; for only on rare occasions—as when he puts an end to Brer Wolf with the boiling kettle—are his actions really cruel. We cannot say the same of the Kalulu; yet it would be a mistake to conclude, from the enjoyment with which these stories are received, that the African natives are a bloodthirsty and ferocious race. What they enjoy is the cleverness with which the tables are turned by the weaker party on the stronger, who seemed to have him entirely in his power. And, after all, generation after generation of English children have been fascinated by _Jack the Giant-Killer_, without being precisely horrified by the murderous stratagem practised by Jack on the Cornish giant. The native does not recognise such a clear distinction between animals and human beings as we do. Animals do not speak, it is true, but, for all he knows, there may be nothing to prevent their doing so if they choose. He believes (and acts on the belief) that certain human beings can change themselves into animals and back again. So, in telling stories about animals, he seems continually to forget that they are not human, or perhaps, rather, he assumes that their habits, abodes, and domestic arrangements are very much the same as those of his own people. One of the most typical of the Kalulu stories is the following, told me by one of the Blantyre native teachers. Being an educated man, accustomed to composition and dictation, he was able to give it in a very clear and connected form; whereas it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to make sense of those written down from the dictation of village children, who perhaps did not know the stories very well to begin with, and continually lost the thread when entreated to go slower or repeat a phrase.