Abe Pike--Old Abe Pike, or Uncle Abe as he was variously called--lived
in a one-horse shanty in the division of Albany, Cape Colony. I won't
locate his farm, for various reasons, beyond saying that there is a
solitary blue-gum on the south side of the house and the rudiments of a
cowshed on the north. Uncle Abe was not ambitious; he was slow, but he
was sure. So he said. One blue-gum satisfied him, and as for the
cowshed he meant to complete it during the century. I don't introduce
him as a tree planter, but as a narrator of most extraordinary yarns.
He called them facts--but of the truth of this the reader may judge.
Riding over one warm afternoon, I found him leaning over a water-butt
examining the little lively and red worms therein, which would soon
hatch out into livelier mosquitoes.
"Well, Uncle, how d'ye fare?"
"Porly, lad, porly; pumpkins is scarce."
Uncle Abe took a very old pipe from his pocket, and showed the emptiness
of it by placing a very gnarled little finger into the black bowl.