Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

136 THINKING BLACK
reveals the names of her many paramours, all of whom
must now pay damages for the grandchild's death.
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Here is a strong healthy stream we must tackle.
And being strong, not sickly, how can you expect it to
be always confined to its bed ? Winding and rewinding
like a watch-spring, we follow the twists of our river
round the great S, then out we go together, both
river and traveller, out on a pancake plain. More
marsh than plain this becomes, alas ! for its old orderly
up-stream flow is now impossible; and although no
doubt, like ourselves, this river entered on this plain
with the very best intentions, the flat bankless
marsh has now forced the poor stream to break all his
good up-stream resolutions—a floundering bog, nothing
less. Yea—and note this, gentle reader—we too end
in bog, just as sadly and badly. For you cannot canoe
it, so you resort to the " double man " of exploration
that is to say, aloft is your traveller, pickaback like a
Japanese acrobat, on his negro steed, hands clutching at
the woolly pow, legs twisted tightly round his neck.
Not that this '* double man " is doubly a man—oh !
no,
for the more inches you go up in the world the lower you
descend both in imagination and in reality. Each groping
step in the pitchy, stinking mud sees you nervously
clutching at the negro's head, knees driven into the
neck and ever mindful of the white knight's fate in
" Alice's Adventures," to wit, a beautiful parabolic curve,
head first. And then for the sordid sequel. Gathering