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us that it is true. They tell the story (an amalgam as absorbing as
calzium chloereydes and hydrophobe sponges could make it) how
one happygogusty Ides-of-April morning (the anniversary, as it
fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit and rights in
appurtenance to the confusioning of human races) ages and ages
after the alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all crea-
tion, tigerwood roadstaff to his stay, was billowing across the
wide expanse of our greatest park in his caoutchouc kepi and
great belt and hideinsacks and his blaufunx fustian and ironsides
jackboots and Bhagafat gaiters and his rubberised inverness, he
met a cad with a pipe. The latter, the luciferant not the oriuolate
(who, the odds are, is still berting dagabout in the same straw
bamer, carryin his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out, so
as to look more like a coumfry gentleman and signing the pledge
as gaily as you please) hardily accosted him with: Guinness thaw
tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin? (a nice how-do-you-do in Pool-
black at the time as some of our olddaisers may still tremblingly
recall) to ask could he tell him how much a clock it was that the
clock struck had he any idea by cock's luck as his watch was
bradys. Hesitency was clearly to be evitated. Execration as cleverly
to be honnisoid. The Earwicker of that spurring instant, realising
on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance, nexally
and noxally, of physical life (the nearest help relay being pingping
K. O. Sempatrick's Day and the fenian rising) and unwishful as
he felt of being hurled into eternity right then, plugged by a soft-
nosed bullet from the sap, halted, quick on the draw, and reply-
in that he was feelin tipstaff, cue, prodooced from his gunpocket
his Jurgensen's shrapnel waterbury, ours by communionism, his
by usucapture, but, on the same stroke, hearing above the skirl-
ing of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over
the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunder-
ous tenor toller in the speckled church (Couhounin's call!) told
the inquiring kidder, by Jehova, it was twelve of em sidereal and
tankard time, adding, buttall, as he bended deeply with smoked
sardinish breath to give more pondus to the copperstick he pre-
sented (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chap-