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sauntered with my friend through a
busy street in B——, and our conversation taking a serious turn, I expressed
myself somewhat as follows:
Each has his different bend of spirit; each his peculiar aptitude for receiving instruction. To some, the country with its shade and sunshine, singing birds and flowering hedges, is a mentor of mighty truths. To others, the city with its human hum, and groaning tread wheel, ever turning, is a preceptor teaching of life, death, and eternity.
“And to which class do you belong?” said my friend.
“To the latter,” I replied. “Not, perhaps, so much by nature as by circumstance. I have dwelt in the city until its many tones seem to me to blend into one cry, ’Come over and help us,’ and the cry draws out my sympathies, and my sorrow, too; for what is individual help to the mass?”
“Well, as you please. I will take my pastime in the country and leave you to moody lucubrations, amid dingy houses and smoky chimney-pots. Give me rural scenes and sentiment!”
“Will you deny that sentiment is to be found in the city,” I hastily inquired, yet half dreading a reply, knowing that my friend was strongly addicted to sarcasm.
“Surely not. Only I’d leave you to seek it.”
“Agreed. I promise to find it in any corner you may choose.”
“There, then,” he promptly answered, at the same time pointing to a piece of pork out-hanging from a butcher’s stall.
“In pork!” I feebly ejaculated, perceiving the case was a lost one.
“Well, perhaps, not exactly in it, but attach sentiment in ever so weak a form to fat pork, and I’m your humble servant for ever.”
He triumphed, for I sought in vain.
Since then I have travelled all round the world, and that which I could not find at home I have found in the Antipodes. Now, judge between me and my sarcastic friend. The scene is Hobarton.
It had been a cold rainy day, and now was a damp cheerless night; for, though the rain had abated, the clouds still looked sulky, and the sky gave no promise of moon or stars to light me home through the bush. So to be independent of both, I took a lantern and set out. My way lay through the uncomfortable bit of uncleared land, to the left of Newtown. Every now and then I had to draw up before a charred trunk of a tree, and each time, though accustomed to the interruption, the same suspicion presented itself—namely, that a Ranger was advancing to meet me. Nor did my lantern assist me to a full definition of the figure, for in bringing its light to bear upon the trunk, the long black arms only seemed to stretch more determinately towards me. In England such trees might be considered of the ghost-tribe; here, where fears are too much pre-occupied to think of supernatural appearances, a charred stump is not only a charred stump, but very often something more, especially if it be large and hollow. Well, I safely passed two, four, six stumps, and then remembering that there could not be many more, I bravely stepped out, breaking the unpleasant silence, or still worse cranch of my feet on the gravel, singing:
“My lot is cast in that blest place,”
to the tune of the Old Hundredth. My air and voice were decidedly defiant, until I neared the last stump, then I became sensible of a quaver in the latter. The coming stump, or rather the stump to which I was coming, was the most awkward of the lot—a thorough specimen of diablerie—on the top of a hideous-looking trunk, was perched a large round knot, bearing a resemblance to a human head. All this I knew, and was prepared for; but, in spite of being prepared, my heart and I stood still together before it. The black head wore a feather —a bright red feather—which blew furiously about in the wind. As I watched it, a hand emerged from the hollow and drew it in. Then came a voice from within.
“You can pass on.”
I hesitated, when the permission was repeated.
“What are you!” I demanded, recovering my self-possession.VOL. I. CC No. 25.
