Specimens Of African Love
Suicides
Henry Theophilus Finck
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_ According to Livingstone, in Angola suicide is sometimes committed by a girl if it is predicted to her that she will never have any children, which would be a great disgrace. A writer in the _Globus_ (Vol. 69, p. 358) sums up the observations of the medical missionary, G. Liengme, on suicides among the peoples of Africa. The most frequent cause is a family quarrel. Sometimes a girl commits suicide rather than marry a man whom she detests, "whereas on the other hand suicide from unhappy love seems to be unknown." In another number of the _Globus_ (70: 100), however, I find mention of a negro who killed himself because he could not get the girl he wanted. This, of course, does not of itself suffice to prove the existence of true love, for we know that lust may be as maddening and as obstinate as love itself; moreover, as we shall see in the chapter on American Indians, suicide does not argue strong feelings, but a weak intellect. Savages are apt to kill themselves, as we shall see, on the slightest and most trivial provocation. _