Part 63 (1/2)

I h lucid and forcible, would look so bad on paper that the police ht interfere with its publication

The er the s hih life At adult age, he consists chiefly of wings; but, in addition to these, he has a pair of eager, sleepless eyes, endoith a power of so like 200 diameters; and he has also a perennially empty stomach--the sort of vacuum, by the hich Nature particularly abhors He can eat nothing but fish; and, since he suffers under the disadvantage of being unable to dive, wade, or swiuin does this, and does it with a listless ease which would excite the envy of the er allowed the latter any respite for thought

The penguin also lives on fish, but there the resemblance happily ends

In every other respect he presents a pointed antithesis to theabout him, for he consists wholly of a comfortable body, a blunt neb, and a pair of small, sleepy eyes

He has no neck, for he never requires to look round; no wings, for he never requires to fly; no feet, for he stands fir of flour, which, indeed, he closely reseht call it monotonous He takes his position on a smooth rock, protected from cold by the beautiful padded surtout which clothes him from neb to base, and froainst the impenetrable feathers He feels like a stove in the winter, and like a water-bag in the summer When, from a sort of drowsy, felicitous wantonness--for he never requires to act either on reason or impulse-- he desires to visit an adjacent island, he simply allows the tide to encircle him to about two-thirds his total altitude; then, by the floatative property of his peerless physique, and by the mere volition of will, he transports himself whither he lists

He has feants, and no a the happy hours away--that is his idea He knows barely enough to be aware that with , no tree of knowledge, thank you all the sah as he is; the perpetual sabbath of absolute negation is good enough for him His motto is, 'Happy the bird that has no history' Once a day, he experiences a crisp, triuer as melody differs from discord; then he slowly half-unveils his currant-like eyes, and selects fro around hieneral applicability, will best adratify his epicurean taste

Whilst he is in the act of dipping his neb in the water to help himself to the fish, a man-o'-war hawk espies hi a quivering shriek of hunger, the strong-winged sufferer cleaves the intervening air with the speed of a telegram, and has siezed and sed the fish before his own belated shriek arrives

The penguin, living in total ignorance of the uely and half-amusedly apprehends his deprivation In this way

You have heard the boarding-house girl rap at your bedroom door, and tell you that breakfast is on the table You have thought to yourself: Now I' on my----; now, my socks; now--Why, I'm in bed still, and no nearer breakfast than at first! Here we have a reproduction of the penguin's train of thought, plus the slight shock of surprise which anisation

The whole thing does n't auin's base; so he apathetically depresses his dreamy eyes in casual quest of another fish

Now if the feathered ht obtain the second morsel on the same terms as the first; but Nature has so constructed him that, in his estimation, the most important of all economies is the econouin, sevenfor a fish Can he otiates with lightning speed the interspace between his tortured stouin's provender, whilst his own stea after, and blends with the desolate plop of his prey into the abys madly round--his Connemara complaint freshly whetted by what he has taken--he sees the first penguin dropping asleep as the fish he has just caught slides down head-foremost, to be assimilated by the simple clockwork of his interior

Too late, by full fifteen seconds! and the wild despair of lost opportunity lends a horrid eeriness to the banshee utterance hich thediscovery, barbed, as it is, by the prior knowledge that every penguin within twenty miles is in Nirvana for the present

Now he must wait--ah! heavens, wait!--while one with ht tell a hundred By that tiht another fish; and though it be only--Bythat his own appetite will be more finelyoff Woe for thewithout delay, and hequickly--quickly--quickly--for there will be loafing enough in the grave, as the great American moralist says

But, five hundred ry waste of waters is another rock, where penguins steep theed, ear-splitting yell, wrung fro torment of his fell disease, the unhappy bird expands his Paradise-Lost pinions, and, with the speed of a co its perihelion, sweeps away to that rock; for, like Louis XVI, he knows geography

After listening with much interest to the description here loosely paraphrased, I fell asleep with the half-forratitude that I was not a ht and equipped -yard Every Runnymede boundaryrated, had purchased the two quietest and most shapeless ood in this connection But in a week or two, lazy as the rapple either of them, stabbard or port, in the open paddock; they had learned to await, and even approach him, starn-on So he had to pelt theeniously devised adjustable crush, forht the one he wanted for the day Let Jack alone

Having caught one of his nation) hat in dearth of adequate superlative, I shall silish saddle, of more than ordinary capacity The barrow-load f firehich had once formed the tree was all in splinters, so that you could fold the saddle in any direction; and the panel had fro that, when Jack mounted, he looked like a hen in a nest, so surrounded he ith exuding tufts of wool, raw horse-hair, ees of half a dozen plies of old blanket, of various colours

But when he said it was the softest saddle on the station, though it would be nothing the worse for a bit of an overhaul, I was bound to admit that the statement and the reservation were equally reasonable

We journeyed together as far as the western gate of Jack's paddock; and, the conversation turning on saddles, he expressed hie on the folly of riding horses like Cleopatra and Satan without a specially-rigged purchase His idea of such a purchase was si bulkheads of, say, thirty inches in height by eighteen in width, rigged thortshi+ps, one forrid of the rider, and one aft, and each padded on the inside surface

A couple or three rope-yarns, rove fore-and-aft on each side, would prevent the rider listing to stabbard or port, while the vertical pitch would be provided for by a lashi+ng rove across each shoulder If the horse reared and fell back, you would just draw your head in, like a turtle, and let the bulkheads carry the strain With such a tackle (pr tayckle), Jack would undertake to ride the Evil One himself, let alone his na Jack at work on the (horse) for the last week, while the (horse) aforesaid, knowing the purchase he had on his rider, would be a fool to give in But these young Colonials had nothing in them; and Jack's spirit was eneracy

After parting froreatness, I detected a certain spontaneous self-co my head; a certain placid cockiness not to be fully accounted for by the consciousness of birth, which naturally broadened as I approached Runnymede I thereupon resolvedthe analytical systeations, discovered, in the first place, furtively underlying arded as a final authority on things in general

Hitherto this aspiration had fallen short, partly owing to the clinging sedinorance, but more especially because I lacked, and knew I lacked, what is known as a 'presence' Noever, the high, drab belltopper and long alpaca coat, happily seconded by large, round glasses and a vast and scholarly pipe, seereater difficulty; and, for perhaps the first time in my life, I enjoyed that experience so dear to so well-dressed This would naturally come as a revelation to one who had always been satisfied with any attire which kept hi in presenting an academic-cum-capitalistic appearance even to the sordid sheep, as they looked up froalahs, sweeping in a changeably-tinted cloud over the plain, or studding the trees of the pine-ridge like large pink and silver-grey blossoe But outside all possible research or divination lay the occult reason why htly on his throne This will be explained in its proper place

In the last sheep-paddock, just after clearing the pine-ridge, IJack on Satan Satan was an ornanificently beautiful cream-coloured horse, with silver mane and tail; but unfortunately spoiled, a couple of years before, in the breaking-in

Now the shallow, inattentive reader rasp all that is implied in the remark that a specialist, unconscious of his own peculiar and circureatness, and cheaply replaceable in case of extinction, was exercising a seasoned colt, thoroughly spoiled beforehand Your novelist, availing hins this office to the well-educated, well-nurtured, and, above all, well-born, colonial-experiencer, fresh frolish rectory But I ainative one at that; therefore not entirely lost to all sense of the fitness of things

Listen, then: When, after an assiduous and inglorious apprenticeshi+p, you can wheel a galloping horse round in his own length, without paraboling over his head, or turning him upside dohen you can take him safely across any leap he is able to clear--when you can send hih forest or scrub--you are scarcely one step nearer to the successful riding of an equine artist that has sworn to get you off, or perish Scarcely one step nearer than you were at first, unless you constitutionally possess certain qualifications, and are at the saifts and acquire, you are fain to take credit

This rather obscure apostrophe is written expressly for the benefit of such iinative litterateurs and conversational liars as it may concern