Rupert Hughes

“ But Wadhams declined with thanks. He had had enough of real life. Mr. Spiegel agreed to give him back his old job. He returned to the keeping of his own books and the reading of other men's. And now at least once a month when trial-balancing time comes, you may find him at the Owego Emporium late at night. Once more under the green eyeshade—under the heavy eyelids, under the thick eyeglasses, under the green eyeshade, under the green drop-light, the book-keeper's eyeballs shuttle to and fro as he adds and re-adds and re-re-adds cords of columns. ”

“ Wadhams began to believe that literature is to many people what stained glass is to little churches; it takes what the average eye can see only as common every-day yellow sunshine and weaves it into glory and magic and rainbow resplendence. Charles Lamb was a bookkeeper, and he saw everything prismatically. It was not because Wadhams was a bookkeeper that he could not see Africa artistically. ”

“ But Wadhams found the appalling possibilities of the literal truth seen with the fleshly eye.
In desperation he left the towns and plunged into the wilderness, hoping against hope for adventure. Better to be entombed in a tiger or a cannibal than murdered with ennui. ”

“ Once a bookkeeper always a bookkeeper. Wadhams pondered. Fifteen hundred would not suffice to lift him from his estate for more than a few months. It would dribble away in inconsequential luxuries, the mere sweetmeats of pleasure which have no sustenance and leave a sour taste. While he was fretting over his good luck, a new book on Africa appeared at the library. ”

“ He found that a drunken sot is a drunken sot even if he happens to be called King Palabala. A thatched roof was a slovenly and populous thing in spite of all the traditions. The head-dresses of the natives looked better in the photograph than on the head. Wadhams believed in short hair and frequent shampoo.
But still with an undismayed hope he stalked adventure, lugging the heavy gun that was guaranteed to stop an elephant and double up a leaping tiger. ”

“ They baptized numerous black bodies, but the souls stayed chocolate. Civilization had brought all its attendants. Natives learned to speak English in order to lie in another language. They were schooled in new vices, new cheats, new gambles, new crimes. There were churches, but they were like the African Baptist or the A. M. E. churches of Owego; and there were saloons like Owego saloons.
Wadhams made so bold as to invade the dirty hut of one shiny onyx monarch of Gaboon known as King Jim Smith Bobala. Wadhams counseled this ace of spades that rum was ruining his people. ”

“ He might perish at the hands of a Mbuti warrior, some treacherous Aruwimi chief might transfix him from behind his wicker shield, the tusk of a chaining rhinoceros might disembowel him, or he might be macerated by the flail-like tail of a crocodile, or end as a ragout in the kettle of a Mpongwe tribal feast. ”

“ Spiegel, and asked him to send his forgiveness to Oscawana, care of Mrs. A. J. Wadhams, R. F. D. 31. Then he took train to his ancestral estates, consisting of several acres and a mortgage.
Even Oscawana had changed a good deal since he had left it, but there was a reminder of boyhood days in the billboards and dead walls which were alive with the circus posters was of one of the numerous greatest shows on earth. One huge picture represented the wilds of Africa. It was a conglomeration of ferocious animals: a lion leaping into the gaping jaws of a crocodile ”

“ The man in the woodshed came forth and simultaneously, from behind a dozen rail fences, came various circus people who had remained in discreet retirement, less afraid of the animals than of the the terrible figure of Wadhams and the blazing elephant gun with which he had eventually destroyed several thousand dollars' worth of live stock.
The leader of the circus gang demanded damages for his dead; but the pale-faced man from the woodshed turned out to be a business man too—a Mr. ”