The Argosy — page 48: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

38 Letters from Majorca. violently behind you is physically beneficial: a relief which probably averts more serious consequences. For instance, it cannot be denied that it is much better to slam a door than to knock a man down. But the remedy must be kept for rare occasions. To slam a door every day of one’s life would do away with its healing influence. Like everything else, it would weaken by repetition. H. C. by morning light certainly looked an object for compassion. He was very distressed, no longer irritable, but desponding. If he retumed to Palma in this condition, the fair Mallorquinas would give him neither smiles nor glances, Fifty doors slammed off their hinges would have done him no good. He took a sketch of a Manacor insect on the spot, after a night’s attack upon him, and you will see at the head of this letter a true and unexaggerated likeness of this formidable creature. However, we had come to see the caves, and so would have enough to distract his attention during the day. There are two sets of caves in the neighbourhood. The Dragon caves and those of Arta. It takes a day to see each, and we thought it better to visit the smaller and least famous first. These are the Dragon caves of Manacor. By starting at nine or ten in the morning, we could be back by six o’clock at night. We gathered together our photographic affairs and went down to the vehicle in waiting: the very same ramshackle old thing that had nearly proved our death last night. This was not the land of barouches, or of any open conveyance. But our driver was very intelligent and good-tempered. He had “no Sassenach,” but understood our signs. Half a sign often penetrated to his ready brain. Before we leave Mallorca, we shall have invented a new language without speech. For this we ought to be canonized or raised to the peerage. What benefactors shall we be to mankind : especially to those having to do with shrews who will have the last word. One really hardly wonders, in reading sundry accounts in the newspapers, that with some long-suffering men, it at last comes to a word and a blow, and the blow comes first. It was the loveliest morning, with blue skies and warm sunshine. The inside of the vehicle soon grew intolerable, and we mounted beside the driver: a seat uncomfortable as ingenuity could have made it, but there was air to breathe. Even here the roof ex- tended over our heads and made it difficult to sit upright. Every now and then, our heads came into such contact with it that our hats lost all shape and gave us a most forsaken appearance. But there was no one to see, and we did not care. The drive, through a country flat and uninhabited, had no strong points about it. I don’t think we met a creature the whole way. Yet it was a quiet, pleasant experience, for the sake of all the sun- shine and blue sky and pure air. Its loneliness also gave one a sense of repose and of being out of reach of the world. Our good- comicbooks.com