PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 100.
January 10, 1891.
MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.
NO. X.--THE FONDMAN.
(_BY CALLED ABEL, AUTHOR OF "THE TEAMSTER."_)
[The eminent Author writes to us as follows:--"How's this for
a Saga? Do you know what a Saga is? Nor do I, but this is one
in spite of what anybody may say. History be blowed! Who cares
about history? Mix up your dates and your incidents, and fill
up with any amount of simple human passions. Then you'll get
a Saga? After that you can write a Proem and an Epilogue. They
must have absolutely nothing to do with the story, but you can
put in some Northern legends, and a tale about MAHOMET (by the
way, I've written a play about him) which are bound to tell,
though, of course, you were not bound to tell them. Ha, ha!
who talked about thunderstorms, and passions, and powers and
emotions, and sulphur-mines, and heartless Governors, and
wicked brothers? Read on, my bonny boy. _Vous m'en direz des
nouvelles_, but don't call this a novel. It's a right-down
regular Saga."--C.A.]
THE BOOK OF STIFFUN ORRORS.
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration: The Characters Personally-Conducted by the Author to
Reykjavik.]
STIFFUN ORRORS was a gigantic fair-haired man, whose muscles were like
the great gnarled round heads of a beech-tree. When a man possesses
that particular shape of muscle he is sure to be a hard nut to crack.
And so poor PATRICKSEN found him, merely getting his own wretched back
broken for his trouble. GORGON GORGONSEN Was Governor of Iceland, and
lived at Reykjavik, the capital, which was not only little and hungry,
but was also a creeping settlement with a face turned to America. It
was a poor lame place, with its wooden feet in the sea. Altogether a
strange capital. In the month of Althing GORGON took his daughter to
Thingummy-vellir, where there were wrestling matches. It came to the
turn of PATRICKSEN and STIFFUN. STIFFUN took him with one arm; then,
curling one leg round his head and winding the other round his waist,
he planted his head in his chest, and crushing his ribs with one hand
he gave a mighty heave, and clasping the ground, as with the hoofs of
an ox, he flung him some two hundred yards away, and went and married
RACHEL the Governor's daughter. That night he broke PATRICKSEN's back,
as if he had been a stick of sugar-candy. After this he took his wife
home, and often beat her, or set his mother on her. But one day she
happened to mention PATRICKSEN, so he fled, cowed, humiliated, cap
in hand, to Manxland, but left to her her child, her liberator, her
FASON, so that she might span her little world of shame and pain on
the bridge of Hope's own rainbow. She did this every day, and no one
in all Iceland, rugged, hungry, cold Iceland, knew how she did it. It
was a pretty trick.