"But that has nothing to do with the story. What has, is that Ista wanted to tell me about the ceremonial. She did not believe in it at all. Privately, she was a kind of atheist among her people, but kept her opinions to herself. You must not think that because you see, hear or read of savage rites, that all the savages believe in those things. No sir. There is as much disbelief amongst them as with us. Perhaps more. They think things out. I might say that in a way they think more than the average civilized man. You see, a civilized child thinks for itself up until it is six or seven or so, and then the schools get hold of it, and from then on, it's tradition and believing what it's told to believe. That goes on through school life. Then at work, the man who would dare to vary on his own account is not wanted. So independent thought is not possible there. Work finished, it's the evening paper and editorial opinions. So really, man does not get much of a chance to think straight at any time. I guess if he did, the whole scheme would fall to pieces. That's why I say civilized man does not only not think, but perhaps can't think. His brains are not trained to it. Give the average man something with real, straight, original, first-hand thought in it, and he's simply unable to tackle it. His brain has not been cultivated. He wilts mentally. It's like putting the work of a man on a boy. Catch what I mean? Now a savage gets more of a chance. It was that way with Ista. She had thought out things for herself and had her own beliefs, but they were not the beliefs the Tlingas were supposed to hold. But after all she did not tell me much besides her own disbeliefs. When you think of it, no one can tell another much. What you know you have to discover alone. All she told me was what was going to be done, and that was about as disappointing as the information you might get about what would take place in initiation in a secret society. Some was lost in transmission.
"Well, at last the ceremonial started up with a great banging of drums and all that. It was a great scene, let me tell you, with the tumbled vegetation, glaringly colored as if a scene painter had gone crazy. There were the flashing birds--blood-colored and orange scarlet and yellow, gold and green. Butterflies, too,--great gaudy things that looked like moving flowers. And the noise and chatterings and whistlings in the trees of birds and insects. There were flowers and fruits, and eatings and speech-makings. As far as I could gather, the chief speakers were congratulating the hearers upon their luck in belonging to the Tlingas, which was the greatest tribe on earth and the favorite of Naol, the lizard god. We capered round the tribal pole, I capering with the rest of them of course. Somerfield took a picture of it. Then there was a procession of prospective mothers with Ista among them. Rotten, I thought it. Don't imagine female beauty, by the way, as some of the writers on savage life would have you imagine it. Nothing of the kind. White, black or yellow, I never saw a stark woman that looked beautiful yet. That's all bunk. Muscular and strong, yes. That's a kind of beauty in its way. True as God, I believe that one of the causes of unhappy marriages among white folk is that the lads are fed upon false notions about womanly beauty, and when they get the reality they think that they've captured a lemon.