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They consist of leathern bottles, filled with air, fastened together with poles, and covered with planks, reeds, and rushes. Our raft had twenty-eight wind-bags, was seven feet broad, nearly as long, and carried two horse-loads and six men. As our caravan numbered thirty-two loaded animals, the crossing of the river occupied half a day.
"ADIEU, GRANDS ERASEURS DE ROIS," so it starts: "Adieu, grand crushers of Kings; arrogant wind-bags, Turpin, Broglio, Soubise, Hildburghausen with the gray beard, foolish still as when your beard was black in the Turk-War time: brisk journey to you all!" That is the first stanza; unexceptionable, had we room.
"I will believe in it when I have been shown the currier who made the wind-bags which Ulysses on his homeward voyage received from Æolus." It is said that, having attained the age of eighty years, he became weary of life, and put an end to himself by voluntary starvation. I shall here pause to make a few remarks suggested by the chronological and astronomical works of Eratosthenes.
But why are actors, in general, such blatant and obnoxious asses, such arrant posturers and wind-bags? Why is it as surprising to find an unassuming and likable fellow among them as to find a Greek without fleas? The answer is quite simple. To reach it one needs but consider the type of young man who normally gets stage-struck.
The Latter-Day Pamphlets do not add much that is new to Past and Present or to Sartor ; and little of what they add is either needful or true. The world had been fully enlightened about Wind-bags, Shams, the approach to Tophet, Stump-orators, Palaver-Parliaments, Phantasm-Captains, and the rest of the Sartorian puppet-pantomime.
Father Mahony, of Cork, said that the Irish fisherman turned his back on the teeming treasures of the deep, because he groaned beneath the cruel English yoke. Since then I have seen him fishing, but I did not hear him groan. He wanted boats, nets, and to be taught their use. Mr. Balfour supplied him with plant and instructions. Father Mahony and his tribe of wind-bags feed the people on empty air.
Then the weather-wise know there are two kinds of clouds, rain-clouds and wind-clouds, and that the latter are always the most portentous. In summer they are black as night; they look as if they would blot out the very earth. They raise a great dust, and set things flying and slamming for a moment, and that is all. They are the veritable wind-bags of Æolus.
While we have been minding our work the Nationalists have been agitating. For thirteen years they have been on the stump, and have stolen a march on us and they take a lot of catching up. We allowed them to empty their wind-bags, forgetting that the English people were not so conversant with the facts or with the character of the orators as we are.
He is one of those flamboyant wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent gestures, and fine eyes the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire to think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical coward and prides himself on being the realisation of Nietzsche's Uebermensch.
I don't remember exactly what he was saying, but this was the idea: 'All of you fellows that chase outlaws make too much fuss about it. Well, some of us do, though the newspapers and the wind-bags that follow us around make ten times the fuss we do.
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