They moved forward and reached a point where the scrub and grass came to an end and the path descended a steep bank to traverse a region of solidified blue mud, sinter mounds, hot pools and geysers. The sulphurous smell was very strong. The track, defined at intervals by stakes to which pieces of white rag had been tied, went forward over naked hillocks towards the hip-roofs of the native settlement.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
There was another silence broken unexpectedly by Geoffrey Gaunt. "In fact, Dr. Ackrington," said Gaunt, "you think we have a potential murderer among us?"
"I do."
"Strange. I've never thought of a murderer before as an insufferable bore."
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
The war had brought them closer together. The Colonel commanded the local Home Guard and considered that he owed his life to his pakeha friends, and though he thought them funny, loved them. It did not offend him, therefore, when Colonel Claire furtively read a novel under his very nose. He rumbled on magnificently with his story, in amiable competition with Texas Rangers and six-shooter blondes.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
"For pity's sake, my dear Dikon, drive a little away from the edge of the abyss. Can this mountain goat track possibly be a main road?"
"It's the only road from Harpoon to Wai-ata-tapu, sir. You wanted somewhere quiet, you know, and these are not mountains. There are no mountains in the Northland. The big stuff is in the South."
"I'm afraid you're a scenic snob. To me this is a mountain. When I fall over the edge of this precipice, I shall not be found with a sneer on my lips because the drop was merely five hundred feet instead of a thousand."
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
"If it is of any interest, you may as well know you have seen it at its worst. Smith is not always drunk and Questing is not always with us."
"Not? But I thought . . ."
"He absents himself. I rejoice in the event and deplore the motive. However."
Dr. Ackrington glared portentously into his glass and cleared his throat. Dikon waited for a moment, but his companion showed no sign of developing his theme. Dikon was to learn that Dr. Ackrington could exploit with equal mastery the embarrassing phrase and the disconcerting silence.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
Its beauty was perfectly articulate yet utterly remote. Against his will he was moved by it as an unmusical listener may be profoundly disturbed by sound forms that he is unable to comprehend.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
White men move across the surface of New Zealand, but the Maori people are of its essence, tranquil or disturbed as the trees and lakes must be, and as much a member of the earth as they.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
THOUGHTS ON RACE AND MARRIAGE
From
time to time the subject of race and marriage will come up, and occasionally I
will be asked my thoughts about it. So, since you asked (or even if you did
not), here they are. I figure I have as much right to an opinion as any other man.
When
you ask me that question, there are two things I want to know from you before
the conversation even begins. First, I want you to define very specifically
what you mean by “race,” because it does make a difference. Second, are you
asking my opinion regarding all the races, or about two particular races
specifically?
Consider
this fact: EVERY SET OF FULL SIBLINGS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD HAS HAD A
DIFFERENT GENETIC MAKEUP. So, if we define “race” that narrowly, then all of us
would have been in either an interracial marriage or married to our sibling. Indeed,
the United States has acknowledged the genetic problems with incestuous
relationships to the point that the states generally outlaw marriages between
certain types of close relatives. So, the law of our land REQUIRES marriage
between different “races” if you want to define the term that finely.
Some
will object that I am being overly picky about definitions. “There are only
three races – black, white and yellow.” Oh? Then tell me what race Polynesians
are, and Mexicans, and American Indians, and Mongolians. Is a marriage between
a Samoan and a Cherokee an interracial marriage?
And
when you start this discussion, you also have to define what is meant by
“full-blooded.” If a person is 63/64ths white and 1/64th Oriental,
is he full-blooded white? What if he is 53/64ths white? What if he is 33/64ths
white, barely over half? Come on now, you have to define your terms. If you are
going to make a rule, then you have to be specific about what it takes to constitute
a violation of the rule.
And
really, do you know what race you are? Do you REALLY know? Most of us do not
know our ancestry beyond five or six generations. Once we get on the other side
of the ocean, our lineage disappears into the mists of history. What races were
your ancestors who lived in 2000 B.C.? What races do you come from, regardless
of how you define “race”? The fact is that you CANNOT know, and thus it would
seem to be to be somewhat hypocritical for you to censure someone for a
marriage when you cannot PROVE absolutely that you are not the product of the
same thing from some point in the past?
If
you are a fan of movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood, you probably would
recognize an actress named Dona Drake, who was active from 1933 to 1977. She
was an attractive and vivacious woman who usually was cast as a character of
Middle Eastern or Latino descent. The truth was that she was reportedly
three-fourths black and one-fourth white, but most people probably would have
guessed that she was Latino. (She had a prominent role in the Hope/Crosby
classic, “Road To Bali.”) She was married to a well-known Hollywood fashion
designer, but there was little outcry about it because she APPEARED to be
Latino.
If
we define race too closely, then my wife and I probably constitute an
interracial marriage. She is mostly of German heritage and I am mostly Welsh.
That fact doesn’t bother me at all, but I would guess that Adolph Hitler would
not have been too fond of the union had we gotten married in 1940, since he was
very insistent upon Germans maintaining their “racial purity.”
So,
Mark Green, do you consider interracial marriages to be sinful? Certainly, in some
cases. If the marriage is adulterous, it definitely would be sinful, regardless
of the races involved. (For the record, I am VASTLY more concerned regarding
adulterous relationships than I am about those that are interracial.) It is
often the case that interracial marriages result from a rebellious attitude toward
parents on the part of the children who are marrying, and such an attitude is
sinful regardless of the circumstances.
However,
if one of my daughters had married a man of another race who was morally
upright, courteous, responsible, law-abiding, kind and respectful, and a good
provider and protector for his family, I might have had some concerns about it
because of the inherent difficulties, but I would FAR rather have had him as a
son-in-law than a white man who was a complete cull – and there are a multitude
of those running around loose who ought to be locked up.
I
often say that we will get the wrong answers if we ask the wrong questions. The
pertinent question in this discussion involves cultures, not races. What
difference does it make what external physical differences a couple has, such
as the color of their skin, as long as they are unified in their principles? However,
CULTURAL differences can put a tremendous amount of stress upon a marriage, and
ultimately upon the children, and those factors have to be considered. Even if
both husband and wife are white, if one of them is Russian and one is German,
given the history of the bloody conflicts between those two countries, I would
imagine that there are going to be inherent problems in the household. (It is bad enough if one of them is a Yankee and the other from the South.)
There
is a difference between an act being inadvisable, irresponsible, or reckless,
and its being inherently immoral. Very frequently I see intercultural marriages
that seem to me to be so inadvisable as to be grossly irresponsible given the
circumstances; but to say that an interracial marital union is immoral, IN AND
OF ITSELF IN EVERY CASE, is to say more than I can defend from a scriptural
standpoint.
My
observation has been that when someone is vehement and vocal in opposing
interracial marriages, his objection does not apply to all races, but to only a
couple of specified races; and the opposition is due to the fact that the
culture attached to one of the races is so repulsive to that person that he has
made a moral issue out of it. In other words, his opposition is based upon
prejudice, not upon principle; and the individual has gone so far as to manufacture
a supposed principle out of his prejudices. Let me be clear that there are indeed
cultures that I find very objectionable, but my objection is to the CONDUCT
generally found in those cultures, not to some physical characteristics of the
people that they could not help having in the first place.
Ill-advised?
Frequently. Reckless? Very often. Irresponsible? Sometimes. Those, however, are
not the question we are discussing here. The question is whether or not such a marital
union is immoral IN ITSELF, and I find no basis in either logic or Scripture to
uphold such a view. If someone can show me one, then I will adjust my position.
Think about it. What
if a man had objected to his daughter marrying your son purely because your son
is ugly? Is being ugly on the outside any less valid of an objection to a
marriage than a slight difference in skin pigment on the outside?
And think about
this: first graders on a playground pay no attention at all to racial
characteristics. Racial prejudice is a learned reaction. And did not the
Apostle say, “In malice be ye children?”
And then another
thing. Prejudice in itself is not always a bad thing. It is not invalid logic
to generalize negatively. After all, it was that same Apostle who said, “The
Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.” But those expressions refer
to conduct that was commonly found among the people of Crete, and not to their
race as such.
So, Mark Green,
are you in favor of mixed-race marriages? In many cases, probably not, because
the sad fact is that molding together the habits and opinions of two sinful
human beings is hard enough without adding any external factors to make things
more difficult. Plus, there are always the effects that are suffered by the
children because, whether we like it or not, people ARE prejudiced, and the
children are left to deal with that. In many cases mixed-race marriages are
ill-advised, at least, for those reasons.
However, my caution
regarding such unions is based upon practical factors, NOT moral factors.
“Marriage is honorable in all,” the apostle said. If there is no immorality
involved, then the marital relationship is honorable. However, note that he
said “honorable in all,” and not “advisable in all.”
It is worth
noting that Ruth, a Moabitess, and Rahab, a Canaanitess, were both ancestors of
the Lord Jesus, and both of them were involved in mixed marriages. Would any of
you care to tell them that they did wrong?
Nobody noticed Barbara's physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored mannerisms, all combined against her looks and discounted them.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
With most of this inheritance they had built the boarding house they now lived in. The remaining sums had been quietly lost in a series of timid speculations. They had worked like slaves, receiving good advice with well-bred resentment and bad advice with touching gratitude. Beside these failings, they had a positive genius for collecting impossible people, and at the time when this tale opens were at the mercy of a certain incubus called Herbert Smith.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
I conceived it my duty to report this matter to the local police authorities, who displayed a somnolence so profound as to be pathological.
(from Colour Scheme, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)
"There is no reason why I should not keep an eye on your man and I shall do so if you and he wish it. What you say of him modifies my previous impression that he was one of the emasculate popinjays who appear to form the nucleus of the intelligentsia at Home in these degenerate days."
(from Colour Scheme, by Ngaio Marsh)
Claire is an army man and it's a pity he has failed so signally to absorb in the smallest degree the principles of system and orderly control that must at some time or another have been suggest to him. My sister is a bookish woman. However incompetent, she seems to command the affection of her martyred clients, and I am her only critic. Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they make no money and work like bewildered horses at an occupation that requires merely the application of common sense to make it easy and profitable.
(from Colour Scheme, by Ngaio Marsh)
When Dr. James Ackrington limped into the Harpoon Club on the afternoon of Monday, January the thirteenth, he was in a poisonous temper. A sequence of events had combined to irritate and then to inflame him. He had slept badly. He had embarked he scarcely knew why, on a row with his sister, a row based obscurely on the therapeutic value of mud pools and the technique of frying eggs. He had asked for the daily paper of the previous Thursday only to discover that it had been used to wrap up Mr. Maurice Questing's picnic lunch. His niece Barbara, charged with this offence, burst out into one of her fits of nervous laughter and recovered the paper, stained with ham fat and reeking with onions. Dr Ackrington, in shaking it angrily before her, had tapped his sciatic nerve smartly against the table.
(from Colour Scheme, by Ngaio Marsh)
The very vagueness of Mr. Wilkie's answer made Wilson believe him. It was the answer of a man who had allowed himself to fall into a languid rut until he had become oblivious to everything, except what went on immediately around him.
(from Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by John P. Marquand)
"I have seen many types of people and there is one thing I have observed about your great country, Mr. Hitchings. You do not treat women very realistically. You think they are all very nice, because they are women. You think Miss Hitchings is very nice. Why? Because you think she is beautiful. You like her wide violet eyes. You enjoy the flame color in her hair and no doubt the way she swings herself when she walks. Excuse me, please. I come from a race with a tradition which is very, very different. Excuse me, I do not think Miss Hitchings is beautiful at all. Please, that is why I can see her more clearly than you do, Mr. Hitchings. A beautiful woman is so very, very confusing to a man. He desires her. Excuse me for my rudeness, but you desire Miss Hitchings."
(from Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by John P. Marquand)
"I have an idea that you saved me a good deal of trouble by taking me home," he said. "I'm grateful to you for that.'
"Don't be grateful," she said. "I've an idea that you can look out for yourself very well, Mr. Hitchings."
"Then you have a higher opinion of me than I have," he said.
"I hope not," she answered, "because I have a rather low opinion."
(from Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by John P. Marquand)
"You are fortunate that you don't resemble the Hitchinges. You don't resemble us at all."
She leaned toward him and there was a catch in her voice as she answered.
"That's the nicest thing you could possibly say. It makes me feel better than I have for a long while. Thank Heaven! I don't resemble them at all."
"Yes, it is a relief," said Wilson easily. "I was afraid you would have our nose, and that's a drawback. You have got our jaw, though, and that is your very worst feature - a stubborn jaw."
(from Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by John P. Marquand)
