The froth is for the many,
The wine is for the few;
Unseen, untouched of any,
We keep the best for you,
                             Old Friends,
The very best for you.

The Many cannot know us;
They only pace the strand,
Where at our worst we show us—
The waters thick with sand!
But out beyond the leaping
Dim surge 'tis clear and blue;
And there, Old Friends, we are keepin:
A sacred calm for you,
                                     Old Friends,
A waiting calm for you.

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

MY voyages (in paper boats) among savages
often yield me matter for reflection at home. It
is curious to trace the savage in the civilised
man, and to detect the hold of some savage
customs on conditions of society rather boastful
of being high above them.

I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the North
American Indians never to be got rid of, out
of the North American country? He comes
into my Wigwam on all manner of
occasions, and with the absurdest "Medicine." I
always find it extremely difficult, and I often
find it simply impossible, to keep him out of my
Wigwam. For his legal "Medicine" he sticks
upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and
plasters the same with fat, and dirty white
powder, and talks a gibberish quite unknown to
the men and squaws of his tribe. For his
religious "Medicine" he puts on puffy white
sleeves, little black aprons, large black
waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collarless coats with
Medicine button-holes, Medicine stockings and
gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a
highly grotesque Medicinal hat. In one respect,
to be sure, I am quite free from him. On
occasions when the Medicine Men in general,
together with a large number of the miscellaneous
inhabitants of his village, both male and
female, are presented to the principal Chief, his
native "Medicine" is a comical mixture of old
odds and ends (hired of traders) and new things
in antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of
which he is particularly fond), and white and
red and blue paint for the face. The irrationality
of this particular Medicine culminates in a
mock battle-rush, from which many of the squaws
are borne out, much dilapidated. I need not
observe how unlike this is to a Drawing Room
at St. James's Palace.

The African magician I find it very difficult
to exclude from my Wigwam too. This creature
takes cases of death and mourning under his
supervision, and will frequently impoverish a
whole family by his preposterous enchantments.
He is a great eater and drinker, and always
conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving
exterior. His charms consist of an infinite quantity
of worthless scraps, for which he charges
very high. He impresses on the poor bereaved
natives, that the more of his followers they pay
to exhibit such scraps on their persons for an
hour or two (though they never saw the
deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits
by his decease), the more honourably and piously
they grieve for the dead. The poor people,
submitting themselves to this conjuror, an
expensive procession is formed, in which bits of
stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity of other
unmeaning objects besmeared with black paint,
are carried in a certain ghastly order of which
no one understands the meaning, if it ever had
any, to the brink of the grave, and are then
brought back again.

In the Tonga Islands, everything is supposed
to have a soul, so that when a hatchet is
irreparably broken, they say, "His immortal part
has departed; he is gone to the happy hunting-
plains." This belief leads to the logical sequence
that when a man is buried, some of his eating
and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike
implements, must be broken and buried with
him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a
more respectable superstition than the hire of
antic scraps for a show that has no meaning
based on any sincere belief.

Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to
throw a passing glance on some funeral
solemnities that I have seen where North
American Indians, African Magicians, and
Tonga Islanders, are supposed not to be.

Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there
dwelt with me for a while, an Englishman of
an amiable nature, great enthusiasm, and no
discretion. This friend discovered a desolate
stranger, mourning over the unexpected death
of one very dear to him, in a solitary cottage
among the vineyards of an outlying village.
The circumstances of the bereavement were
unusually distressing; and the survivor, new to
the peasants and the country, sorely needed
help, being alone with the remains. With some
difficulty, but with the strong influence of a
purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and
determined, my friend—Mr. Kindheart—obtained
access to the mourner, and undertook to arrange
the burial.

There was a small Protestant cemetery near
the city walls, and as Mr. Kindheart came back
to me, he turned into it and chose the spot. He
was always highly flushed when rendering a
service unaided, and I knew that to make him happy
I must keep aloof from his ministration. But when
at dinner he warmed with the good action of
the day, and conceived the brilliant idea of
comforting the mourner with "an English funeral,"
I ventured to intimate that I thought that
institution, which was not absolutely sublime at home,
might prove a failure in Italian hands. However,
Mr. Kindheart was so enraptured with his
conception, that he presently wrote down into
the town requesting the attendance with
tomorrow's earliest light of a certain little
upholsterer. This upholsterer was famous for
speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his own) in