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It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly it was no desire for learning, that took me to Gardener Tonken's glass-house next Saturday afternoon. The goose-driver was there to welcome me. "Ah, wide-mouth," he cried; "I knew you would be here. Come and see my library." He showed me a pile of dusty, tattered volumes, arranged on an old flower-stand.
His land in Kentucky was taken from him by speculators because he had failed to have it properly registered, and he was imprisoned for debt on the spot where he had reared the first cabin in northern Kentucky. In the spring of 1824, an old, tattered, weather-beaten figure appeared on the streets of Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky.
Still he hung back, looking about him, till to his delight he saw the other litter arrive and out of it emerge Jeekie, still wearing his sun-helmet with its fringe of tattered mosquito curtain. "Here we are, Major," he said in his cheerful voice, "turned up all right like a bad ha'penny, but in odd situation." "Very odd," echoed Alan. "Could you persuade these ladies to let go of me?"
The effect is enhanced by the tattered clothes hung to dry in the windows, by the sun-faded rags that flutter from the polished balustrades these are ivory-smooth with time; and the whole scene profits by the general law that renders decadence and ruin in Venice more brilliant than any prosperity.
Their course aft was attended with difficulty. All along the deck was a thick mass of wreckage, broken casks, boxes, sections of spars, tattered canvas, and enough wire rope and other gear, it seemed, to encircle the world. Amidships the hull sagged so that the deck was not three feet above the water.
Sara, who snatched her lessons at all sorts of untimely hours from tattered and discarded books, and who had a hungry craving for everything readable, was often severe upon them in her small mind. They had books they never read; she had no books at all. If she had always had something to read, she would not have been so lonely. She liked romances and history and poetry; she would read anything.
The old men would speedily recognize it, and the young men too, they have heard so many legends attaching to it. If it still exists it is well hidden; it would have too great an effect on the authorities would be like a red rag to a bull. And as they stand staring it suddenly rises in the air slashed and tattered, imperishable as to color.
It is astonishing in these days to think how many dingy, tattered or torn bank-notes were fished out of these same receptacles and handed over to a neighbor with the customary "With the greatest pleasure, my dear sir. When you can sell your corn or hogs, or that mortgage is paid off, you can return it."
Give the bucket over here." He drank of the thick, yellowish, boiled water eagerly and yet with disgust, spilling the liquid on his tattered clothing through the shaking of his wasted hands. Then he turned to the wall, and lay down sullenly, scowling at the lantern-jawed sympathiser who tried to thrust a rolled-up coat under his aching head.
All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple with its various problems. We pass a grove of tall eucalyptus trees on our left, their rugged trunks like an army of tattered, unkempt giants.
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