The Iron Horse and the Golden Goose.

Dear Reader, if one morning you ambled out to gather in the milk and found that some person or persons unknown had plucked out your front fence, or stolen your aerial pole for a clothes’ prop, you would naturally take offence and feel that you were more or less “up the pole.” Likewise, if, when you arrived at the place where the railway station should be, you found that the whole system had gone up into the blue without leaving even a puff of steam to mark its late existence, would you not experience a feeling of personal loss, as if a very intimate friend and protector had disappeared without leaving an address? Would you not run crying hither and thither seeking some sign of the trusty old black steeds of your earliest memory, whose very familiarity perhaps had led you to become a little careless in the manifestation of your appreciation? Would you not feel that something of great significance had gone out of your existence?

Truly, dear reader, life is like that. We never miss the golden goose ‘til she abandons minting for moulting. We take it as read that the sun will take the call tomorrow, that the tide will do its usual stunt, and that night will follow day (and vice versa) without any special announcement by the management. But if the sun got out on the skate with the Big Bear or that Irish star Orion, and failed to punch the clock for a week, or the days and nights got all mixed up, we would begin to appreciate the ordered regularity of the cosmography. But as long as Nature does her bit we accept her phenomena with smug indifference. By the same token, dear reader, we are apt to think that the Railway can run without visible means of support. We are like the parsimonious parent who is surprised that he cannot rear hundred-per-centers on food-less meals. Yet, if the Railways locked the stable doors on the “iron horses” for a day or two, the populace would rise in its wrath and demand that the rolling stock be immediately unrolled and started on the roll. Such is the mentality of man that he can only realise that white is white by seeing black.

A land without railways would be as dry as an empty bottle of champagne without the bottle. It would curl up and pass out from congestion of the digestion or commercial anaemia. It would die of constriction of the output, and the land would return to the conditions of the stage-coach. There was certainly romance in the stage-coach. There is as much romance in the “iron horse,” but its romanticism is combined with commercialism. The locomotive is the heart of progress, and the tracks are the arteries conveying the stream of vigour to the extremities of the land.

“Tempus Fugitives.”

The fault with existence, dear reader, is that we are too busy living to live. We page 15

“Locked the doors on the ‘Iron Horses.’”

are bored, bilious and blase. We are mere “tempus fugitives,” tied to time yet pursued by it. We suffer from palpitation of the pandemonium. We are “smug-ologists”; nothing surprises us, we wonder at nothing. The days of Wonder went with whiskers and whatnots. But when Wonder is paid off he takes with him his natural partners, Joie de Vivre and Happy Jack, the paying teller of the Bank of Serenity. We accept Life at his face value, and he's got the face to pull any bluff. But in life, as in everything, there is a story behind the story; this is the one worth digging out, and in the excavation lies the secret of Wonder. There is a kick in Old Man Wonder. The highbrow who knows everything is a deep-sea fish who sees nothing but water; he is a water-logged water log. But the fish who refuses to agree that the whole world is aquatinted, either grows legs or bursts his airtight compartment; whichever way it goes he has a lot of fun. There are more fish out of the sea than ever lived in it, which accounts for the fact that life is a somewhat fishy business.

Facts and Factotums.

A child is happy as long as it is imbued with a sense of wonder; when it ceases to wonder it is no longer a wonder. Of course there are people who regard babies as mere instruments of torture, but the wise know that the man who is fifty per cent, child is hundred per cent. man. Knowledge is power, dear reader, but what is power? We are open to be searched.

On the other hand, Wonder is a lack of definite knowledge which makes conjecture a pleasant pastime, and frees the mind from the limitations of Fact. Too many facts make man a mere factotum. I'll wager that a lot of people lost a lot of fun and excitement when it was proved that to fall over the edge of the earth was impossible. The chief kick to be gained from ocean travel before the days of enlightenment must have lain in the danger of overshooting the terminus and prolonging the voyage ad infinitum, even if the passenger did lose the benefit of the pink portion of his ticket. Nowadays the most one can anticipate from a circumnavigation of the globe is that he will make his point of departure his point of arrival. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but too much is more than enough.

Nowadays everything is staked out, indexed, labelled, and priced up, and the “optopest” or “pessimop” (as the case may be) who questions the identity of the proverbial spade, is indexed under L.

Too many facts make man a bore,
The flavour of wisdom lies not in the
core;
There's meat in conjecture and virtue
in dreams,
And nothing, I'll warrant, is just
what it seems.
The proof of the pudding is all in the
taste,
And not in the knowledge of spices
and paste.
Let highbrows deny it, and egotists
thunder,
The plum in the pie of existence is
Wonder.

Of course, shocked reader, that drear old dear, Common Sense, demands that we gather knowledge, and doubtless she is

“A lack of definite knowledge makes conjecture a pleasant pastime.”

page 16 right; but the mind, like every other whole, is constructed of two halves. The citizen who can utilise one-half of his upper upholstery to the accumulation of facts, and reserve the other for recreative purposes, will never suffer from air-pockets in his mental atmosphere.

Unnatural History.

Speaking of knowledge, allow me to give some the air. When New Zealand was chipped off the edge of China and started on its downward path, it is probable that its fauna included many Chinese puzzles on the hoof. But the carnivora gradually extinguished themselves by a process of mastication. The snakes and adders played snakes and ladders with each other until the winner died of distension of the rungs, and the only livestock to rise superior to the situation were the birds—with the exception of one or two heavier-than-air specimens of wild life who proved too tough for the table. The chief of these was the tuatara. He is the only animal who can stand in one place as long as a policeman. In fact, he is the pioneer of the slow-motion stunt. His idea of strenuous exercise is to break out into goose-flesh, and when he is really reckless he shifts his weight from starboard to port. This done, he takes a couple of years off to rebuild his depleted tissues. In appearance, he resembles an embalmed pineapple in mourning, or a wet Sunday afternoon in Scotland. He often lives for a hundred years or more, but scientists have never been able to discover why. No one knows what a tuatara really is, but if he is not a snake with a pedestrian complex, then he must be a prehistoric postponement in a rubber overcoat. The tuatara is not a fast eater; his idea of a quick-lunch is to bolt the same piece of nourishment for two months.

An Early Special

If it takes more than one swallow to make a summer, it takes a multitude of chews to stoke a tuatara.

I love tuataras their coats are so
tough,
They never get vulgar, or otherwise
rough;
They keep without spirits for ages or
more,
And ‘though sleeping soundly 'tis
seldom they snore.
I love to observe them partaking of
lunch,
And if they are somewhat deficient in
“punch,”
It's only a matter of years—let us
say
A couple of hundred would answer
O.K,
Before they awake to the fact which
they've blinked,
That ‘though still extant they are
also extinct.
I love tuataras they make me feel
calm,
And if I don't harm them they'll do
me no harm,
But still I feel tempted to puncture
their peel,
With pins just to see if they really
are real.