describe a term, perhaps not generally understood,
for the reason that I am going to apply
it to many things in my own country, and to
many persons amongst my own countrymen.

  These curious people, then, the fetish
worshippers, are in the habit of attaching an
extraordinary importance, if not a superstitious
veneration, to articles of the most
common-place and homely description.  A
piece of looking-glass, an old tobacco-pipe, or
a dirty blacking-bottle, left, possibly, by some
artful sailor in exchange for a bargeful of
native fruits, becomes the household god—
the idol—the fetish of its simple possessor, to
be defended with his life, to be preserved
religiously under every vicissitude of fortune
If any visitor to the wigwam of that untutored
savage should break, destroy, or
otherwise damage that household god, or
fetish, then is there war from that moment
between the two men.  If the visitor or the
visitee be of sufficient importance in his own
country to raise a general tumult, then is
the quarrel taken up by the whole tribes of
the respective men; and dwellers afar off on
the banks of one of the mighty native rivers
know that somewhere in the land there is
war to the knife when they rise of a morning
and find the deep waters rushing by coloured
with human blood.

  I am not, of course, prepared to go so far
as to attempt a comparison in every particular
between these fetish worshippers of
barbarism and the fetish worshippers of
civilisation, who exist in fruitful abundance
around me.  The wholesome restraining provisions
of a somewhat severe criminal law
have not been without their effect in curbing
the natural impulses of my countrymen.  I
fancy that I have noticed a savage glare in
the eye of my Lady Poodlecraft when I have
trodden upon the delicate toes of her Italian
fetish greyhound, and a fierce grinding of the
false teeth of old Miss Paroquet when I have
ousted her favourite fetish cat from his comfortable
seat upon the hearth-rug; and I
cannot help thinking that these passive exhibitions
of anger would have developed into
something like active barbarian mischief but
for the calm and refining influence of education,
and the knowledge that there was a
police-station round the corner with Newgate
looming in the distance.

  Not less dangerous, but for these restraints,
would be my middle-aged, retired tradesman
fetish worshipper, who lives in a fetish villa
protected by high walls, spring-guns, broken
glass, iron spikes, and other civilised fortifications
of domestic privacy.  If there is
any point about his fetish that he worships
more than another, it is the gravel-walk, clean,
tight, firm, and swept like a carpet, leading
from the gateway to the dwelling-house
door.  Twice has he been fined two pounds
and costs before a local magistrate (the last
time with a caution from the bench) for
violently assaulting a butcher and a baker
who dared to desecrate his fetish pathway by
leaving their heavy footprints in the yielding
gravel.  Another collateral fetish connected
with his habitation is the grass-plot before
the windows; and if any bold man wishes to
try to the utmost the strength of educational
and legal bonds, in checking the natural barbarian
impulses that smoulder within the
breast of this civilised worshipper, let him
trample upon this piece of sacred verdure,
and he shall find it like stamping upon the
tail of a slumbering crocodile.

  Another fetish worshipper of the same
class is Miss Soapdragon, a paragon of cleanliness.
Her fetishes are a spotless door-step,
an unsoiled passage, and virgin whitey-brown
painted wainscoating as pure as
marble.  Leave a muddy footprint upon the
door-step or the floor-cloth, or the mark of
a black kid glove of imperfect dye near the
handle of the dining-room door, and bid adieu
for ever to thy old and faithful friend, poor
Soapdragon of the Treasury, for never shalt
thou see him more under his own roof.  Call
about the time when you know he must be
trying to make himself comfortable in the
only room — a sort of housekeeper's pantry —
allowed by Mrs. S. for general use in their
rather extensive mansion, and the servant
will come tripping down the pathway to the
outer gate, which is always kept locked, with
"mistress's compliments, and master is not
at home. "  In vain you ask if anything
serious can have happened to divert the
usually monotonously-regular Soapdragon
from the very even tenor of his way; you
can get but one answer from the faithful
slave of the carpet-broom and the scrubbing-brush —
" mistress's compliments, and master
is not at home."

  Go into any public coffee-house used by
regular, respectable men, and you shall find
a fetish worshipper in the person of an old
customer who has become used to a particular
seat and a particular corner.  Go in as a
stranger, and place yourself quietly in what
appears to be the hardest worn chair or
couch in the room, and when any old gentleman
enters and walks round you several
times, frowning and coughing, appearing to
be restless and uncomfortable, or on the
verge of striking you over the head with the
umbrella that he always carries, you may
know the fetish worshipper, and you may
know that you are seated on his regular,
accustomed fetish chair.  If you retain it for
a certain time he will either do one of two
things—leave the room with unconcealed
disgust and temper, or ask you in no very
bland tones to resign his fetish.

  Some men of this class make fetishes of a
particular omnibus, and a particular seat
within that omnibus.  If that omnibus be
full, and that seat be occupied, they vent their
wrath, sometimes upon the occupants, and
sometimes upon the conductor.  So well does
the latter individual know the temper of the