"Oh, I shall have to go into mourning all the same," Frida
continued somewhat pettishly, "and waste all my nice new summer
dresses. It's SUCH a nuisance!"

"Why do it, then?" Bertram suggested, watching her face very
narrowly.

"Well, I suppose because of what you would call a fetich," Frida
answered laughing. "I know it's ridiculous. But everybody expects
it, and I'm not strong-minded enough to go against the current of
what everybody expects of me."

"You will be by-and-by," Bertram answered, with confidence.
"They're queer things, these death-taboos. Sometimes people cover
their heads with filth or ashes; and sometimes they bedizen them
with crape and white streamers. In some countries, the survivors
are bound to shed so many tears, to measure, in memory of the
departed; and if they can't bring them up naturally in sufficient
quantities, they have to be beaten with rods, or pricked with
thorns, or stung with nettles, till they've filled to the last drop
the regulation bottle. In Swaziland, too, when the king dies, so
the queen told me, every family of his subjects has to lose one of
its sons or daughters, in order that they may all truly grieve at
the loss of their sovereign. I think there are more horrible and
cruel devices in the way of death-taboos and death-customs than
anything else I've met in my researches. Indeed, most of our
nomologists at home believe that all taboos originally arose out of
ancestral ghost-worship, and sprang from the craven fear of dead
kings or dead relatives. They think fetiches and gods and other