Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/75

 piece of tapa? Would it perhaps be well to send that tapa, as I had perhaps planned, as a present to my talking chief, to send it now, so that I may refuse him with all good faith?’ And he sits and studies your countenance and wonders if you will be favourable to his request. He plays with the children but refuses the necklace of flowers which they have woven for him and gives it instead to your daughter. Finally night comes. It is time to sleep and still he has not spoken. So finally you say to him, ‘Lo, I would sleep. Will you sleep also or will you be returning whence you have come?' And only then will be speak and tell you the desire in his heart.”

So the intrigue, the needs, the obligations of the larger relationship group which threads its carefully remembered way in and out of many houses and many villages, cuts across the life of the household. One day it is the wife’s relatives who come to spend a month or borrow a fine mat; the next day it is the husband’s; the third, a niece who is a valued worker in the household may be called home by the illness of her father. Very seldom do all of even the small children of a biological family live in one household; and while the claims of the household are paramount, in the routine of everyday life, illness or need on the part of the closer relative in another household will call the wanderers home again.

Obligations either to give general assistance or to give specific traditionally required service, as in a