MAN AND HIS FUN.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 28 August 1914, Page 8

MAN AND HIS FUN.

Man that is born of woman is of few days, and inordinately fond of Kun.

In the beginning, when his tumlet is full of milk, and his soul of content, he lies upon his back and kicks his heels in the air;" .he says "(sa-ga" and "Coo-go," and that is Fuii.

Being grown older, he climbs a tree and falls out thereof ;he goes in swimming, and is well-nigh drowned ;he absents himself from school, at the expense of his cuticle, and that is Fun.

He grows in size, but not in wisdom, for now is he in college. He goes forth by night and steals the signs of poor tradesmen; he marches in a procession of fools, and burns his books ; he gets drunk overnight, and reaps headaches in the morning, and that is P^un.

He conceives a desire for the company of young women ;he follows one girl about, and wears her hair ; she carries ' his scalp in her belt, and she rests under the shadow of his ears, and that is Fun.

In the end she throws him over, and the sunshine is gone out of his life, and for the space of 'three months he is as a blighted sycamore and as a wild ass wailing in the desert, and that is Fun.

He takes to cynacism and to neglect of his personal appearance, and, for that he himself did not make the world, he saith it is but a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and a denied bad concourse at that ; he believes that he is old. and he suffers in his heart, seeing that his moustache hears him not out, and that is Fun.

He returns to the world on his own invitation, and now he is a man of the world

he knows the

wickedness of all things and the doctrine of mixed drinks ; his trousers are trousers of truth, and his coats are coats' of correctness, and that is Fun.

He drinks the champagne of the Caul anci the soda water that is naught but marble-dust and vanity; he goes to the play ;he saith "My dear," unto the dancing girls ;

he gives his head to Herodias, and pays for the charger, and that is I-'un. .

And having done thus for a space, he is grown old, and his blood is turned to gout in bis veins ; he sits within the club window in the 'sun ; he catchss the young men by the skirts of their coats and tells them that he hath been a devil in his time, and that is Fun. And in the last day he is cased in rosewood decked without silver, and laid in the earth. And when the young men hear he is dead they shall say one unto another : "Let us pour a libation to him, being in the nature of a shifter before dinner, for he was Fun." —"Puck."