Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His SonButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His Son
Butler, Samuel
Satire; Utopian fiction; Utopias -- Fiction
In passing I may say that George could never get his own boots back
again, though he tried more than once to do so. My father always made
some excuse. They were the only memento of George that he brought home
with him; I wonder that he did not ask for a lock of his hair, but he did
not. He had the boots put against a wall in his bedroom, where he could
see them from his bed, and during his illness, while consciousness yet
remained with him, I saw his eyes continually turn towards them. George,
in fact, dominated him as long as anything in this world could do so. Nor
do I wonder; on the contrary, I love his memory the better; for I too, as
will appear later, have seen George, and whatever little jealousy I may
have felt, vanished on my finding him almost instantaneously gain the
same ascendancy over me his brother, that he had gained over his and my
father. But of this no more at present. Let me return to the gaol in
Sunch’ston.
“Tell me more,” said George, “about the Professors.”
My father told him about the nuggets, the sale of his kit, the receipt he
had given for the money, and how he had got the nuggets back from a tree,
the position of which he described.
“I know the tree; have you got the nuggets here?”
“Here they are, with the receipt, and the pocket handkerchief marked with
Hanky’s name. The pocket handkerchief was found wrapped round some dried
leaves that we call tea, but I have not got these with me.” As he spoke
he gave everything to George, who showed the utmost delight in getting
possession of them.
“I suppose the blanket and the rest of the kit are still in the tree?”
“Unless Hanky and Panky have got them away, or some one has found them.”
“This is not likely. I will now go to my office, but I will come back
very shortly. My grandfather shall bring you something to eat at once. I
will tell him to send enough for two”--which he accordingly did.
On reaching the office, he told his next brother (whom he had made an
under-ranger) to go to the tree he described, and bring back the bundle
he should find concealed therein. “You can go there and back,” he said,
“in an hour and a half, and I shall want the bundle by that time.”
The brother, whose name I never rightly caught, set out at once. As soon
as he was gone, George took from a drawer the feathers and bones of
quails, that he had shown my father on the morning when he met him. He
divided them in half, and made them into two bundles, one of which he
docketed, “Bones of quails eaten, XIX. xii. 29, by Professor Hanky,
P.O.W.W., &c.” And he labelled Panky’s quail bones in like fashion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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