Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/173

Rh “For a few days before he starts, feed him moderately, but well. Let him eschew colonial beer in quantity, and entice him not to partake of that which, in infinitesimal doses, is infamous in quality. On the morning of his departure, study his appetite as gaolers and gaol chaplains do study the appetites of distinguished but doomed criminals. Let not his breakfast consist solely, as mine did, of soda-water. See that he had not previously supped solely on sixpenny cigars worth nothing, and colonial-made cognac worth a great deal less. Weep with him, if you will, but wine not. Let him ‘do his spiriting gently.’ As his mission involves questions of muscle and lungs, let him have a short course of reading relative to Harris and Hewitt, and give him a round with the gloves; they are admirable substitutes for the stethoscope. Speak to him like a Polonius and act to him like a father. Put a ten or twenty pound note into his pocket, and present him with a spare pair of socks for his poor feet. Kiss your favourite bar-maid ‘for his mother.’ Accept his paper collar as a token of his regard and of his temporary abandonment of all the amenities of civilisation. And having departed him-which is an American neologism made at the Lyell-measure not his miles by the map or the distance-table of the almanacs, for there be hills and bogs, and things too numerous to mention, which, as you sit at home at ease, enjoying the cud or the ‘kids’ of domestic bliss, are not dreamt of in your philosophy. Have great faith as to the contemptible quantity of correspondence which you will receive, and verily you shall not be disappointed. Believe, as I tell you, that he that expecteth nothing will receive lots of it.

“These are a few ridiculous reflections which came into your humble servant’s head as the mass of adipose tissue extending therefrom to his sadly fatigued feet lay stretched upon a sofa in Sloan’s hotel, Lyell township, after four days of the hardest walking that the said feet had undertaken for a long time before. I hope they satisfy you. They were intended as the beginning of a series of moral reflections, more or less ridiculous, which were certain to suggest themselves during a solitary and weary walk from Westport to Nelson. They were inserted in my note-book, as a sort of sherry-and-bitters for you, before you should have to partake of the heavy diet of practical observations on reefing which I had prepared for you during a two days’ visit to the Alpine Reef, up the Lyell; and they were succeeded by many more notes of an equally discursive character which you might have taken as cheese to this diet of practical observations, or as any other condiment which you may be in the habit of patronising. Unfortunately for you, Sir, a misadventure overtook these notes and your most humble and contrite servant. They came to a premature but probably a deserved end. They were sacrificed at the shrine of Necessity. They were made the material of a burnt-offering to the human instinct of Self-Preservation. Gushing descriptions of scenery which almost exhausted the dictionary of its adjectives-records of administrative remissness the possession of which might have made my life unsafe at the hands of the Nelson Executive-a nautical log of soundings taken during the voyage on the Buller road-memoranda of many things most worthless, no doubt-all these, with the paper which contained them, were made matches of, in the unfortunate absence of a sufficient supply of the article from Bell & Black.