IX

I met the old gentleman marching solemnly across Cork Hill. There was

a tramcar in his immediate rear, a cab in front of him, an outside-car

and a bicycle on his right hand, and a dray laden with barrels on his

left. The drivers of all these vehicles were entreating him in one

voice to stroll elsewhere. He looked around and, observing that

matters were complicated, he opened his umbrella, held it over his

head, and awaited events with the most admirable fortitude. When I had

escorted him to the pavement, and further to his own hostelry, he

seized the third button of my waistcoat and spake as follows:--

"It is an admirable example of the wisdom of nature that she has

refrained in every case from equipping her creatures with wheels

instead of legs, and she might easily have done this. So far as I am

aware there are but four methods of progression in nature--these are,

flying, swimming, walking and crawling. None of these are performed

with a rotary motion, and all are admirably adapted to the people using

them, and are sufficiently expeditious to suit their needs.

"There is no doubt that the most primitive of movements is that of

crawling, and by this method of progression, one is brought into an

intimate contact with the earth which cannot fail to be beneficial. I

do not see any real difficulty in the way of our again becoming a race

of happy and crawling people. The initial essay towards this end is to

shed our arms and legs as useless incumbrances, and then to aim at a

stronger growth of jaw and cranium. Among certain organisms it will be

found that the jaws are the most immediately useful parts of the body,

performing the most varied and delicate functions with the greatest

ease. A dog, for example, will, with the one organ, play with a ball,

kill a cat, or nip the calf of a Christian, and, when the moon is high,

he can make a noise with his mouth which is as loud and quite as

melodious as the professional clamour of a ballad-vocalist.

"One of the greatest evils of civilisation is the longing for speed,

which, within the past hundred years, has developed from a simple vice

to a complicated mania. Long ago men were accustomed to use their legs

in order to propel themselves forward, and, when greater speed was

necessary, they assisted their legs with their hands--this was coeval

with, or shortly after, the arboreal age. Next came the hunting epoch,

when some person, probably a commercial traveller, dropped off a tree

on to a horse's back, and finding the movement pleasant he informed his

companions of his adventure and demonstrated to them how it had been

performed. It is from this occurrence we may date the degradation of

the human race and the industry of horse-stealing. There followed the

pastoral age, when nuts were, more or less, abandoned as a food and

tillage became general. The necessity for conveying the crops from the

field to the camp excited some lazy individual to invent a cart, and,

thus, wheels came into use and the doom of humanity as an instinctive

and natural race was sealed.

"While we walked on our own legs we were natural and instinctive

creatures, open to every impression of nature and able to tell the time

without clocks, but when we adopted mechanical methods of progression

we became unnatural and mechanical people, whizzing restlessly and

recklessly from here to yonder, for no purpose save the mere sensual

pleasure of movement, and we are at this date simply debauched by

travel and have shortened the world to less than one-tenth of its

actual size as well as destroying our abilities for simple and rational

enjoyment.

"If we continue using these artificial means of locomotion there is no

doubt that the race will become atrophied in the legs but with

extraordinary results. The spectacle of an egg-shaped humanity

squatting painfully on engines is not a pleasant one to contemplate,

nor is the prospect of a world wherein there will be neither breeches

nor boots good for the moralist or economist to dwell upon.

"In order to conserve the happiness of the world every inventor should

be squashed in the egg, more particularly those having anything to do

with wheels, cogs or levers. The wheel has no counterpart in nature,

and is unthinkable to any but a diseased and curious mind. Man will

never more be happy until he has broken all the machinery he can find

with a hammer, and has then thrown the hammer into the sea; and then he

can, by experiment, become almost as rooted in the earth as a tree or

an artesian well. It is a bad thing to have an indefinite horizon. It

is a good thing to grow knowing one part of the world as thoroughly as

one knows the inside of one's boots. Legs make for nationality,

patriotism, and all the virtues which centre in locality. Wheels make

for diffuseness, imperialisms, cosmopolitanisms. By the use of legs

humanity has stalked into manhood. By the use of wheels we are rapidly

rolling into a race of commercial travellers, touts, gad-abouts, and

members of parliament, folk with the hanging jaws of astonishment, avid

for curios, and with mental, moral and optical indigestion.

"I believe that the Spanyols and Mandibaloes, two Mongol races

inhabiting the countries at the rear of the Great Chow Desert, were the

first people to deal largely with wheels. The men of these nations

were used, when travelling, to affix two small wheels upon their

shoulder blades, and on coming to any slight incline in their path they

would curl up their legs, lie on their backs and free-wheel as

distantly as the slant of the ground permitted, greatly, no doubt, to

the astonishment of less sophisticated people. But, knowing their

habits, their enemies were wont to lie in wait at the bottoms of hills

and slopes, and when a Spanyol or Mandibaloe came wheeling down a hill

with his legs up he was killed before he could regain a less

complicated position, or one more fitted for defence or offence. Thus,

these races became rapidly extinct, and are now only remembered by the

tracks as wide as a man's shoulderblades which are occasionally found

in parts of the post-tertiary formation."

The old gentleman released the third button of my waistcoat which he

had held for so long and stepped with me out of the hostel. As it had

begun to rain he carefully folded up his umbrella, tucked it under his

arm, and strode rapidly down the street. Some small boys followed him

for a little time singing, "We are the boys of Wexford who fought with

heart and hand," but I drove these away.

X

He wiped his face with a large, red pocket-handkerchief, pursed his

lips, shut one eye, and, with the other, he critically observed the

remnant of his liquor. After a moment of deep consideration he smiled

delightfully and said he thought it was all right. The apothecary

behind the counter smiled also as one gratified and suggested that

there was not much of that at the North Pole, and, after a little

discussion on this point, the old gentleman addressed me in the

following words:--

"I do not understand what necessity impels people to the discovery of

something, which, if it has any existence at all, has only an

idealistic existence, and which, when it is discovered, cannot be

utilised in any possible direction. Utility is the first attribute of

all terrestrial bodies. A stone, for instance, is a useful inorganic

substance--it can be built into a house, or thrown at a duck, or, when

ground into sand, it can be, and is, sold as sugar by a grocer. It is

constantly being utilised in one or other of these directions; and so

with all other objects. But the necessity for a North or a South Pole

has yet to be demonstrated.

"The statement that the North Pole was put there by the Castle

authorities is one which I do not believe, for I am assured that at

every period of the world's history there has been a North and a South

Pole, which, surrounded as they were by snow-clad countries, icebergs,

cold water and whales, were too remote and inhospitable to tempt the

average civilian to journey there.

"The only thing which grows in the Polar regions is ice, and this is

generally found in almost tropical profusion and rankness, growing

sometimes to the height of several hundred feet, none of which wear

boots. Polar bears and Esquimos are also found there, but in scattered

and inconsiderable quantities. These two races spend most of their

time chasing each other in order to keep themselves warm, which they do

by degrees which are often registered on a barometer. They also eat

each other and get scurvy. Outside of these relaxations their

existence is stagnant and unexciting. I sometimes fancy that if I had

the misfortune to be born a polar bear or an Esquimo I would not have

been a patriot.

"I have no esteem for ice in other than easily portable quantities.

Some small pieces to pack around fish, a particle to drop into a glass

of lager beer--that is all the ice which I can regard patiently or

leniently; but a continent composed entirely of ice and polar bears

tempts me to believe that Providence is subject to aberrations.

"It is supposed to redound to the credit of a nation when one of its

citizens resolves to discover some inaccessible and futile place, and

proceeds to do so in the most fantastic manner. The inhabitants of

that country who remain at their work and continue to pay their rates

are expected to be in a condition of wild enthusiasm and delight at the

adventure.--My own impression is, that the majority of people take no

more than a tepid interest in these forlorn adventures, and are but

imperfectly convinced of the sanity of the adventurers; and this is the

more particularly noticeable when the quest is for something so

intangible and unmarketable as a North Pole. Why need they go so far

afield for their excitement? Every discoverer is a detective. He

traces missing places, and there are cartloads of Poles in their own

countries waiting for explorers.

"The habit of seeking for a North Pole is one of only comparative

antiquity. Its conception is well within the historic era, and must,

therefore, be classed as an acquired habit and one not inherent in man.

I have not observed that any other animals are addicted to this

peculiar expeditionary craze. It is true that many species of birds

migrate annually from these shores, and, although their departures are

usually chronicled in the newspapers, it must not without further

evidence be inferred that these birds have gone to look for the North

Pole. They may, as a matter of fact, have left this country to avoid

being arrested, for here one is continually being arrested. The

evidence in favour of the North Pole theory as regards birds is, that

nobody knows where they have gone to, and that as the rest of the earth

is round and densely populated their arrival would be noted somewhere

as their departure was, but their arrival not being so noted, and as

they must be somewhere, the process of eliminating all possible places

leaves nowhere but the North Pole as their objective. Now birds are a

very intelligent and strenuous race of people who build nests in trees

and have often five eggs at a time, and I believe that they leave these

countries because their nests are full of broken egg-shells, and

because the winter is setting in, and because they dislike cold

weather; and, thus disliking cold weather, it is unlikely that they

would fly to the North Pole where the cold is very intense, and where,

moreover, there is little food to be found, saving polar bears and

Esquimos, a form of victual for which birds have only the scantiest

relish. My own impression is, that these birds when out of sight of

land are enabled by a mechanism with which we are not yet familiar, to

convert themselves into fishes, or, alternatively, that they know the

whereabouts of Tir na n-Og and go there, or else that they do not go

anywhere at all but are simply translated into the Fourth Dimension of

Space, and are, thus, flying, nesting and mating all around us in a

medium which our eyes are too gross to penetrate.

"From a perusal of the evening papers I observe that the discoverer of

the North Pole is an American citizen with a complicated pedigree, a

long beard and a red shirt, all of which he hoisted to the top of the

Pole and left there for subsequent identification. I fear this was a

thoughtless action on his part because the Esquimos who live habitually

at the North Pole, but have not discovered it, will, while his back is

turned, take to wearing his shirt in turn. They are a communistic

people, I fancy, and no shirt will survive communism. Also, seeing the

fuss which is being made of their Pole, they may either hide it or sell

pieces of it to tourists as remembrancers.

"The explorer should have cached his shirt and other memorials at the

foot of the Pole, built a cairn upon it, and shook cayenne pepper on

top of all to keep bears away--but it is useless to advise explorers."

The ancient hereupon made a significant gesture to the curate, who

misinterpreted it, and brought more than he had required. He was very

much perturbed, for, as he explained, he had forgotten to bring his

purse with him. He consented, however, to use my purse for his needs,

and, after paying his shot, he, in an abstracted and melancholy manner,

put the change in his trouser pocket. There was only one shilling in

the purse so I did not like to draw his attention to the mistake. He

very genially returned my purse, and said he had conceived a great

liking for me.