Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 3 (July 1, 1929)

The Seven Rages of Man

The Seven Rages of Man.

It truly has been said that man is born to borrow—or is it sorrow; in any case both are equally true. Truer still it is that man is born to bituminous bounding. From the moment his new-found father turns from him more in sorrow than in anger, and asks the nurse if it is necessary for a new-born babe to impersonate a neglected radish, up to the period when his hardening arteries abandon him to the mercy of his relatives, man rambles on rollers. Thus the seven ages of man have acquired a significance unrecognised by Mr. H. G. Dwells in his Outline of Mystery.

From the age of 0 to 3, he literally perambulates; from 3 to 5 he scoots; from the moment he can separate one of Aunt Emmaline's roller-skates
“The Duchess of Thorndon.”

“The Duchess of Thorndon.”

page 15 from its soul-mate he impersonates the flying Jordans along the footpath. Usually at the age of 10.0 he is infected with the bicycle bacillus, and, after mulcting his paternal nibs of thirty shillings down and the balance at five shillings a month for the term of his natural life, he endeavours hourly to break the record over all distances, and practises “broadsiding” among the radishes.

Motor - cycle mania usually breaks out simultaneously with pimples. Being in receipt of seven and sixpence per week, he takes advantage of the higher-purchase system and lives on the remaining two and six by cutting down everything except food, clothes, cigarettes and entertainments, and squares his budget by borrowing from “the boy's best friend.”

“The Last Pedestrian.”

“The Last Pedestrian.”

With the accumulation of years and hairs on his upper lip, his motif is the motor-car. You know how it is done. A mortgage on the life policy, a raid on the savings bank, a clearing sale of his boyhood treasures (sob), and he is the owner of a one-tenth, undivided share, in nine feet of sheet-metal in which is concealed the inner history of an alarm clock, and enough trouble to start a war. Finally he ends up—as I hinted—in a bath chair, where probably he is more comfortable than he has been ever before.