doubtful legends, that there was any place in the world other than these Islands. Why on earth should they have been expected to have developed a system of morals identical with our own? It's idiotic. Systems of morals grow up as the crystallization of the wisest thought of a group of people and are adapted to the conditions in which they find themselves. It isn't common sense to suppose that they would be identical, in a group utterly isolated, with such as has been evolved under absolutely different conditions and among absolutely different natures. And who is to label the various systems 'good' and 'evil'? Who is sufficiently disinterested and unprejudiced to pass upon the question? We white folks think that we are the enlightened ones; but when the enlightened product of our system, mature and supposedly highly civilized, comes out here and with amused contempt takes advantage of the difference (and I do not say the lower grade) of morals worked out by these people through centuries of observation of their own conditions and what was best adapted to them;—when our self-dubbed superior products turn these differences to the gratification of their own selfish lust—whose then is the low grade of character? Who then, ought to wear the garment of contempt?" Mrs. Sands was sitting very straight and her small chin was up and her breath coming with indignant rapidity.
Dick leaned back and regarded steadfastly the
