"Early to bed, and early to rise," is held only fit
to make a man surly, and give him red eyes, by all wild peoples,
who have little work, and who justly hold labour an evil less
only than death. Amongst the Bedawin it is a sign of Shaykh-dom
not to retire before dawn, and I have often heard the Somal
"palavering" after midnight. As a rule the barbarian enjoys his
night chat and smoke round the fire all the more because he
drinks or dozes through the better part of the day. There is a
physical reason for the preference. The absence of light
stimulus, and the changes which follow sunset seem to develope in
him a kind of night-fever as in the nervous temperament of
Europe. Hence so many students choose the lamp in preference to
the sun, and children mostly clamour when told at 8 o'clock to go
to bed.
Shortly after sunrise the young ones are bathed in the verandah.
Here also the mistress smooths her locks, rumpled by the night,
"tittivates" her macaw-crest with the bodkin, and anoints her
hair and skin with a tantinet of grease and palm oil. Some, but
by no means all, proceed for ablution to the stream-side, and the
girls fetch water in heavy earthen jars, containing perhaps two
gallons; they are strung, after the Kru fashion, behind the back
by a band passing across the forehead.
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