Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/129

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DROWNING.
111

together lines of isolated or forgotten facts. Children's sports, popular sayings, absurd customs, may be practically unimportant, but are not philosophically insignificant, bearing as they do on some of the most instructive phases of early culture. Ugly and cruel superstitions may prove to be relics of primitive barbarism, for in keeping up such Man is like Shakespeare's fox,

'Who, ne'er so tame, so cherish'd, and lock'd up,
Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.'