The Argosy — page 232: what you’re looking at

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

Letters from Majorca. 215 ‘The downhill path is easy.” I beg to draw the line at the down- hill path of the Puig Major, which proves the exception. It is extremely difficult, shakes one to pieces, seems absolutely endless. Occasionally it becomes so steep that you have to run for it ; and, as nature has not provided the human body with brakes, it is often extremely difficult to pull up. Sometimes you come against a solid body with a shock that knocks the breath out of you, and internally reduces you to a jelly. Every now and then, in one of these steep declines, I caught my foot in the ulster, doubled up and rolled over like a hedgehog. It seemed very amusing to those who looked on. People have no sympathy on these occasions ; no compassion. ‘They laugh at you. I suppose it is human nature. Who ever does anything but laugh at anyone whose hat blows off, or whose umbrella turns inside out? We came to a halt every now and then; rested upon the huge stones under the trees of the small mountain forests ; listened to the rippling of the water; took breath and compared notes of wounds and bruises. I headed the list: was, so to say, in the sixth form, whilst the others had none of them even obtained their .‘‘ remove.” We photographed each other in groups. The mule appeared splendidly. It always moved its head, and came out with two heads. The effect was extremely original. We think of sending it to the Royal Society of Anatomy, as a singular freak of nature: a two-headed Mallorcan mule! It would create a sensation. Learned professors would lecture upon the phenomenon, look wise, and give some very sage explanations of the matter. In the last group, A. and I are skilfully posed. It is quite a tableau. JI am standing in a pool of water, but just escape wetting my feet by using a couple of stones placed very far apart. My footing is consequently precarious, and I have to throw myself into an atti- tude. A. is offering me his flask, as if I were in the last state of exhaustion. ‘This appearance is not assumed. I feel as if there were nothing left of me but my boots. Unfortunately A. places his stick under his arm, and it is so directed that it looks as if I were running him through the body. Altogether, we might be having a very comfortable little duel in the Bois de Boulogne, after the manner and custom of the excitable Parisians. But, perhaps, B.’s description is as good as any, who remarks that I come out like Ajax defying the lightning. . Luckily for Ajax, I have long since discarded the ulster. ‘The last roll over was just one too many. H.C. grows vulgar upon the occasion—he who is generally so poetically refined—and says that I look like a battered Aunt Sally on a Derby racecourse, without the redeeming pipe; black eyes and swollen features and developments unknown to phrenology. I am too exhausted to retaliate, and ask him how he looked when we came off the rocks-of Miramar, ragged and tanned, that past and gone Sunday. I shall never forget how comicoooks (CO)