[In the Heart of Africa by Samuel White Baker]@TWC D-Link book
In the Heart of Africa

CHAPTER XVI
19/32

She said that my wife would be much improved if she would extract her four front teeth from the lower jaw and wear the red ointment on her hair, according to the fashion of the country; she also proposed that she should pierce her under lip, and wear the long pointed polished crystal, about the size of a drawing-pencil, that is the "thing" in the Latooka country.

No woman among the tribe who has any pretensions to being a "swell" would be without this highly-prized ornament; and one of my thermometers having come to an end, I broke the tube into three pieces, and they were considered as presents of the highest value, to be worn through the perforated under lip.

Lest the piece should slip through the hole in the lip, a kind of rivet is formed by twine bound round the inner extremity, and this, protruding into the space left by the extraction of the four front teeth of the lower jaw, entices the tongue to act upon the extremity, which gives it a wriggling motion indescribably ludicrous during conversation.
It is difficult to explain real beauty.

A defect in one country is a desideratum in another.

Scars upon the face are, in Europe, a blemish; but here and in the Arab countries no beauty can be perfect until the cheeks or temples have been gashed.


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