In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories

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Lang Andrew. In the Wrong Paradise, and Other Stories

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PREFACE

THE END OF PHÆACIA

I. INTRODUCTORY. 1

II. NARRATIVE OF MR. GOWLES. 2

III. THE PROPHECY

IV. AT THE CHIEF’S HOUSE

V. A STRANGER ARRIVES

VI. A BACKSLIDER. A WARNING

VII. FLIGHT

VIII. SAVED!

IN THE WRONG PARADISE. AN OCCIDENTAL APOLOGUE

A CHEAP NIGGER

I

II

III

THE ROMANCE OF THE FIRST RADICAL

A PREHISTORIC APOLOGUE

THE YOUTH OF WHY-WHY

THE MANHOOD OF WHY-WHY

THE LOVES OF VERVA AND WHY-WHY

LA MORT WHY-WHY

A DUCHESS’S SECRET

THE HOUSE OF STRANGE STORIES

IN CASTLE PERILOUS

THE GREAT GLADSTONE MYTH. 17

MY FRIEND THE BEACH-COMBER

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The writer of these apologues hopes that the Rev. Mr. Gowles will not be regarded as his idea of a typical missionary. The countrymen of Codrington and Callaway, of Patteson and Livingstone, know better what missionaries may be, and often are. But the wrong sort as well as the right sort exists everywhere, and Mr. Gowles is not a very gross caricature of the ignorant teacher of heathendom. I am convinced that he would have seen nothing but a set of darkened savages in the ancient Greeks. The religious eccentricities of the Hellenes are not exaggerated in “The End of Phæacia;” nay, Mr. Gowles might have seen odder things in Attica than he discovered, or chose to record, in Boothland.

To avoid the charge of plagiarism, perhaps it should be mentioned that “The Romance of the First Radical” was written long before I read Tanner’s “Narrative of a Captivity among the Indians.” Tanner, like Why-Why, had trouble with the chief medicine-man of his community.

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On this the young men, who were very frivolous, like most of the islanders, laughed aloud, and even the elders smiled. The chief now rose with his staff in his grasp, and, pointing first to me and then to the sky, was, I imagined, propounding a different interpretation of the omen from that advanced by the old priest. Meantime the latter, with a sulky expression of indifference, sat nursing his knees, which had been a good deal damaged by his unseemly sprawl on the ground. When the chief sat down, a very quiet, absent-minded old gentleman arose. Elatreus was his name, as I learned later; his family had a curious history, and he himself afterwards came to an unhappy and terrible end, as will be shown in a subsequent part of my narrative.

I felt quite at home, as if I had been at some vestry-meeting, or some committee in the old country, when Elatreus got up. He was stout, very bald, and had a way of thrusting his arm behind him, and of humming and hawing, which vividly brought back to mind the oratory of my native land. He had also, plainly enough, the trick of forgetting what he intended to say, and of running off after new ideas, a trick very uncommon among these natives, who are born public speakers. I flattered myself that this orator was in favour of leniency towards me, but nobody was paying much attention to him, when a shout was heard from the bottom of the hill on which the square is built. Everybody turned round, the elders jumped up with some alacrity for the sake of a better view on the polished stones where they had been sitting, and so much was the business before the meeting forgotten in the new excitement, that I might have run away unnoticed, had there been anywhere to run to. But flight was out of the question, unless I could get a boat and some provisions, and I had neither. I was pleased, however, to see that I was so lightly and laxly guarded.

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