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166
FETISH AND WITCHCRAFT
chap.

in amongst the bushes at the side of the path, or in the water of the river, or at the end of your canoe, or in the oil in the pots, or in the Manchester cottons in the factory shop. Wherever you look, there it is. In a way it's unobtrusive, it does not spread itself out, or make a noise, or change, yet, sooner or later, in every place, you cannot miss seeing it. At first you think, by changing your environment—going outdoors, coming in, going on a journey, mixing with your fellow-men, or avoiding them—you can get rid of the thing; but you find, when you look round,—a thing you are certain to do when the charm has got its grip,—for sure that face is there as usual. Now this sort of thing tells on the toughest in time, and you get sick of life when it has always got that face mixed up in it, so sick that you try the other thing—death. This is an ill-advised course, but you do not know in time that, when you kill yourself, you will find that on the other side, in the other thing, you will see nothing but that face, that unchanging silent face you are so sick of. The Kufong man who has thrown his face at you knows, and when he hears of your suicide he laughs. Naturally you cannot know, because you are not a Kufong man, or the charm could not be put on you. What you "can do in this here most awful go," as Mr. Squeers would say, I am unfortunately not able to tell you. I made many inquiries from men who know "the face," who had had it happen on people in their families, and so on, but in answer to my inquiries as to why the afflicted did not buy it off, what charms there were against it, and so forth, I was always told it was a big charm, that the man who put it on lost something of himself by so doing, so it was never put on except in cases of great hatred that would stick at nothing and would kill; also that it was of no real use for the