I am grown tired of books. It is a fact that protracted manual toil
strikes a shrewd blow at one's capacity for thought, and at times I
turn from the fierce intellectual life with a weariness I never knew
in the old days. How my friend would smile at such a confession. I,
who have thumped the supper-table until three in the morning, until
our eyelids were leaden with fatigue, growing weary of the strife! Yet
it is sometimes true.
After all, though, my real study nowadays is on deck and below, where
Shakespeare and the musical glasses are beyond the sky-line, and one
can talk to men who have never in their lives speculated upon life,
have never imagined that life could possibly be arraigned and called
in question, or that morality could ever be anything but "givin' the
girl her lines, like a man." My friend the Mate is a compendium of
humanism, the Chief provides me with curious researches in natural
history. Even the Cook, with whom I have been conversing, presents
new phases of life to me, and brings me into touch with the poor, the
ignorant, and the prolific. The poor whom _we_ know at home are only
poor in purse. These men are poor in everything save courage and the
power to propagate their kind. The Cook has received a letter from his
sister-in-law to the effect that he is now the father of twins, and he
looks at me and smiles grimly. Under the pretence of obtaining hot
water for shaving, I am admitted to his _sanctum sanctorum_ abaft the
funnel, and we talk. It is hardly necessary to say that the Malthusian
doctrine receives cordial approbation from my friend the Cook, when I
have expounded it to him.
"Certainly, Mr. McAlnwick," he observes, "but 'ow are you goin' to
start?"
"You see," I reply, "it isn't a question of starting, but a question
of stopping."
"Well," he says stolidly, rolling a cigarette, "'ow are you goin' to
start stoppin'?"
"You," I answer, "might have dispensed with these twins."
"Lord love yer, mister, I _can_ dispense with 'em easy enough. That's
not the question. The question is, 'ow am I to feed 'em, now I've got
'em? An' 'ow am I to avoid 'em, me bein' a man, mind, an' not a lump
o' dry wood?"
Like all theorists, I am hard put for an answer. I look round me, and
watch my interlocutor preparing to make bread. There is a mammoth pan
on the bench beside me containing a coast-line of flour with a lake of
water in the middle. Cook is opening the yeast-jar, an expression of
serious intent on his face. Some cooks sing when they make bread; the
Scotchman I told you of in a previous letter invariably trilled "Stop
yer ticklin', Jock," and his bread was invariably below par. But this
cook does not warble. He only releases the stopper with a crack like
a gun-shot, flings the liquid "doughshifter" over the lake in a
devastating shower, and commences to knead, swearing softly. Anon the
exorcism changes to a noise like that affected by ostlers as they tend
their charges, and the lake has become a parchment-coloured morass.
For five pounds a month this man toils from four a.m. to eight p.m.,
and his wife can find nothing better to do than present him with
twins!