SUPPLEMENT

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1109, 29 July 1882, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUPPLEMENT

“ Yes, you; at all events your umbrella. The fact is we have come the wrong way from the plantation. When I left Hie plantation I was under the impression that it was my right eye you had disabled with your umbrella. It was, in fact, my left eye that was injured, and through this unfortunate mistake, I left the plantation towards the right instead of towards the left. But it’s all right, my dear, we have only to retrace our steps for a mile—that is half a mile to the plantation, and then half a mile beyond it—and then we are at the gate.” “ I wish we were at home, Walter. I wish we had never started. It’s all your fault not starting in time.” “ Well, my dear, I couldn’t help it. A public man must make sacrifices. I was detained by most important public business. I have got three chunks of cong^merate —I mean freestone—now in my pocket, which I think will have a most important and lamentable—l mean lasting—effect upon the architectural and cultus of this young country. By tne way, it must be those thundering—l mean interesting—chunks of felspathic sandstone rock that are making my seat so uncomfortable. Just hold the reins a bit until I put them under the seat.” “Oh bother your homoeopathic rocks. Throw them away. It would be better if you would think less of public business and more of your wife and family.” “ Felspathic, my dear, not homoeopathic; felspathic schistose sandstone conglomerate freestone; a splendiol building material, my dear, especially if it gets a coat of Keene’s cement, anol a dash of anti-corrossive paint. But here we are at the gate at last.” “ I can’t see any gate.” “ No; but I’ll go out and feel along the fence until I find it, and then I’ll yell, my dear. When you hear my “ Coo-ee ” come along.” “ Walter.” “ Yes, my dear.” “ Where are you, Walter? I can’t hear you.” “ Put down pour infernal umbrella then.” “ Walter I Walter! the horses are plunging. Walter!” . “Coo-ee!” “ Walter;” “ Coo-ee!” “Walter! Walter! Walter!” “ Coo-ee ! coo-ee ! coo-ce! Oh, yc gods ; this is awful. I must go back again, anol drive through the gate myself. Here I am, Mary. You can’t possibly hear if you keep your umbrella up in such a rain as this. Now, my love, there is only one thing for it; you must get down, and feel along the fence until you find the.gate, and then call out. I’ll hear you right enough. Just keep talking to yourself, you know. Imagine you are having a bit of friendly scandal with some other old woman.” “ Old woman, indeed! Who do you call an old woman ?” “ That’s right, my dear ; keep it up. Talk away; don’t stop, I can hear you. we are. Now we are through the gate Jump up, my dear, and hold the horses I take an There ought to tie a fence hereabout somewhere, running norjioreast by half north. If I find arc all right.” the horses. o, Dobbin, you “ I’ve found a fence, Walter.” . “ That’s right. What a gift it is—the bump of locality. I knew tWat fence was there. Is it running nor-nor-east by half north T* “ How can I tell ? It’s as dark as pite!h?‘ I can’t see my hand before me; besides, I couldn’t tell in broad daylight.” “ True, I forgot, my love, the ignorance of women is truly lamentable.” “ What do you say ?” “ I was saying, my dear, that you found that fence in a way that was truly remarkable. Now, if you will jump up, we’ll drive straight to Polygoly.” “ We’ll never see Polygoly again, Walter. I’m sure we shall perish in this storm. We shall die of starvation and-cold, or be drowned —l’m sure we shall.” “ What nonsense, my love. Cheer up Mary. There, put the umbrella on the back of my neck if you like. I don’t mind it a bit. I rather like it.” “ Where are we now, Walter ?” “ Here, my dear, we are here, right in the middle of’the Snipe paddock. Don’t you recollect where the snipe got bogged last year ?” “Oh, Walter!” “Oh no, I don’t mean that. I mean we arc here, you know;” and then, Mr. Simpkins added, under his breath—“ God forgive me. I don’t know where lam.” “ The horses have stopped, Walter. What is the matter ?” “Oh ! Nothing, my dear, nothing. I’ll get down and see. It’s only a tree, my love. Dobbin has put his head on one side of it, and Robin has put his head on the other. It’s all right. I know where they are. They’re here right enough.” “ But where are we, Walter?” / We! Oh, we’re here, you know. Don’t you recollect this tree. This is the tree I killed the snake under last year,” apd Mr. Simpkins whispered to himself, “by the Lord, I didn’t think there was a tree within a mile of us.” “ Oh, Walter! I think we’re lost.” “ Lost! Nonsense ! Is it likely I am going to be lost in a country where I know every stump and tree and gate within thirty miles of us? Encke’s comet may be lost, or the Ten Tribes of Israel may be lost, or the last drop of whisky in my flask may be lost, or finished, which amounts to the same thing; but Walter Simpkins is not going to be lost if he is aware of it.” All the time that Mr.* Simpkins was speaking in this cheering and confident manner to his wife, who, besides being seriously alarmed, was getting very cold, he was thinking to himself in this fashion : “ Now where in thunder am I ? I have not the most remote idea. I don’t believe we are in the Snipe paddock at all. I know there isn’t a stump, or a tree, in the whole padpadock; and we have just run up against a thundering great blue gum.” In the midst of his cogitations the off wheel went over a big stump, and the concussion jerked Mrs. Simpkins out of the buggy. The first indication Mr. Simpkins got of the catastrophe was a scream from his wife, who, fortunately, landed in a pool of water, which broke her fall. Mr. Simpkins was out of the buggy in an instant, and, after feeling about for a few minutes, found his wife who had by this time regained her feet. He had some difficulty in finding the buggy again; but, fortunately, as he went towards where he supposed the buggy to be, he tumbled on to Dobbin’s head as the pair were quietly grazing towards him.

“It strikes me, my dear,” said Mr. Simp, kins, “ that these horses have turned round.”

“ I am sure I don’t Walter.” “ Let me think. No Iney havn’t. Yes they have. Of course, you fell off the near side, with your face towards the horses ? Ah! yes! Did you turn a somersault, my dear, when you fell out ?” “ Oh, Walter! How can you be so cruel.” “ No, my love, I don’t mean it as a joke ; but, really, you know, I have an idea that the horses have turned round; and, if so, of course, we will be going in the opposite direction to that which we should go.”

“ I knew you were lost, Walter. If you had only taken my advice, this would never have happened.” “ Lost, my dear! oh, no! Don’t be alarmed; we’re here all right. I know exactly where we are. That stump for instance. I know that stump. Don’t you recollect my betting Johnstone a new hat that he couldn’t jump over it with a sheep under each arm. And don’t you recollect, my dear, that I lost the bet by 1 the mean subterfuge which he availed himself of, in taking a lamb under each arm; and that I had to pay the bet because it was ruled that, a lamb was a sheep, although a sheep wasn’t a lamb.” “ Oh, Walter, how you do talk.” “ I only want to show you, my dear, that I

know exactly where I am,” and then, Mr. Simpkins added (sotto voce) “ the Lord forgive me for that abominable lie.”

They had now been wandering in the dark and rain for about four hours. When Mr. Simpkins confessed to himself that he was lost, they were about half-way between Slocum and Polygoly. Already they had passed through four gates, and four more would land them at the desired haven. Mr. Simpkins here came to a very wise decision. Without acknowledging to his wife that he was hopelessly out of his reckoning, he acknowledged it to his horses, and left them to take their own road. They had often been in the stables at Polygoly, and equine sagacity would, no doubt, carry them there to-night. After four hours more of similar adventures, at last the house appeared in sight; or rather the horses pulled up at the gate, for it was too dark to see anything. “ Here we are at last, my dear.” “ Oh! I’m so glad, Walter!” “ They seem to be all in bed. I think we’d better not disturb the old people; they have evidently given up all hopes of our coming to-night. We will just slip into the room which we always have. Won’t they be surprised to see us in the morning; ha! ha! You go on, my dear. I’ll turn the horses out in a jiffy.” In the bush, the &>ors are hardly ever locked, and Mr. Simpkins was much surprised when his wife called out— , “ Walter, the door is locked.” “Locked, my dear. How very extraordinary ; how very singular; how—. Well, well, I suppose we must knock them up. By the way, perhaps my latch key will open it. So it does. Well, well; that is more singular still. Have you got a match, my dear? mine are all wet. No. Well, it can’t be helped. We must go to bed in the dark.” In the morning, Mr. Simpkins got up and looked out of the window. He rubbed his eyes, with a puzzlbd expression, and looked round the room; then he looked out of the window again,- and then round the room a second time, his expression of bewilderment deepening with each survey. At last he said—- “ Mary, my love.” “ Yes, dear.” “Do you know, I had an extraordinary dream last night. I dreamt that we started to drive out to Polygoly; and that we were caught in a storm ; and that you kept pouring cascades of water down the back of my neck with one part of your umbrella, and poking my left eye out with another; and that, after wandering for eight hours on the plains, we arrived at your papa’s; and now I find it’s all a dream, and here we are in our own bedroom at Slocum. What an extraordinary thing is the reflex action of the cerebro-spinal plexus of the medulla oblongata upon the peripheral portion of the cortical substance of the ganglionic nerve centres during sleep!” “Don’t be a fool Walter!” “But my dear “ Oh, don’t talk nonsense. You have no feeling. If you had suffered half as much as I did during last night’s storm you would not make a jest of it.” “ Then it wasn’t a dream ?” “ A dream Walter! Look at my black silk dress, ruined for ever. Look at your own clothes, mud from head to foot. Look at your eye.’’ juu now ii> wouiu du. xour umbrella kept boring into my left eye, and to escape it I must have unconsciously pulled the off rein and so we must have been driving about in a circle. A circle, my dear, looking at it from a mathematical point of view, and without reference to mundane contingencies or finite boundaries—an infinite circle in fact — has been defined by mathematicians to be a geometrical figure which has its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere. But I see you are asleep, my dear, so I shall go and write a note to your papa explaining that—given the conditions of a women’s umbrella in your left eye, and a thunder storm in your front rear—the journey from Slocum to Polygoly is impossible.” Subsequent investigations proved conclusively that Mr. Simpkin’s explanation was the correct one. The wheel tracks showed that our friends had been driving in circles—not geocentric nor heliocentric, nor concentric, but very eccentric circles, the joint centre of which was the second gate from the plantation. While Mr. Simpkins was under the fond impression that he had safely and triumphantly achieved the feat of striking (thanks to his abnormally developed bump of locality) eight seperate and distinct gates, he had, in fact, passed through the same gate eight times—four times in the direction of Polygoly and four times in the direction of Slocum—all of which goes to prove the truth of the old proverb, that: “It is easier for a weaver’s beam to pass through the eye of a camel than for a civil engineer to drive his wife straight to his mother-in-law.”