Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 4 (August 1, 1930)

The Plundertaker

The Plundertaker.

Dear reader, the march of progress has speeded into a gallop, but Happiness is no Olympic gamester. Man moves with such suddenness that he leaves his future behind him, and the present is the spot marked “nix” in the extreme background of the panorama. He has got a toe-hold on Time and a “Seizers on Science.” He has heaved Happiness over the ropes; he is a pulverulent projectile perforating the panorama; he is the prize pest of Nature's garden; if he had more legs and held his head in the horizontal he would be treated with insecticide. In Nature's scheme of give-and-take he is the prize plundertaker. And as my friend Sing Low remarks, “Whaffor.”

When man staggers off to his little tasks in the morning he is approximately alive, otherwise he could claim a convincing
“The Rev. Hugh Manity.”

“The Rev. Hugh Manity.”

page 15 excuse for remaining at home; during the itching hours he strains brawn and brain, mind and muscle, in the pursuit of the agile ambergris; eventually, if he shuns the bitumen and hugs the rails, he connects with the evening meal, and the most he can claim for the day is that he is still alive—only just, and neither more nor less. Q.E.D., “Ipso perspiro” and “ad abserfdom,” he has gained nought for his access of aggravated agility and acerbated acceleration but a pain in the occiput. Nature is wiser, dear reader; you never see a cabbage pursuing the 8.25 o'mornings, inhaling the fag end of a poached egg, and putting a half-hitch in its haberdashery; the spectacle is denied you of a horse-radish galloping up the straight to connect with the time book; spinach never spins, the ruddy beetroot is no world beater, nor the swede a “swedeometer.” No, dear reader, they rest “vegetatively” on the bosom of Nature and murmur: “Let mum do it.”

Rather let us broadcast with Old Ma Kai Ham:

“Here let me loaf abed beneath the bough,
A thermos flask, a thriller—it's a wow,
Beside me cooking in the kitchenette,
The breakfast, this is paradise enow.”