MAN AND HIS FUN.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13592, 6 October 1914, Page 2

MAN AND HIS FUN.

Man that is born of .woman is of few years, and inordinately fond of Fun.

In the beginning, when his tumlet is full of milk, and his soul of content, he lies upon.his back and kicks his heels in the air; he says."Ga-ga" and "Goo-go," and that is Fun. Being grown older, he climbs a tree and falls out thereof; he goes in swimming, and is well-nigh drowned; he absents himself from school, at the expense of his cuticle, and that is Fun. He grows in size, but not in wisdom, for now he is in college. He goes forth by night and steals the signs of poor tradesmen; he marches in a procession of fools, and burns his books; he gets drunk . overnight, and reaps headaches in the morning, and that is Fun. He conceives a desire for the company of young women; he follows one girl about, and wears her hair; she carries his scalp in her belt, and she rests under the-shadow of his ears, and that is Fun. In the end she throws him over, and the sunshine is gone out of his life, and for the space of three months he is as a blighted sycamore and as a wild ass wailing in the desert, and that is Fun. He takes to cynicism and to neglect of his personal appearance, an«, for that he himself did not make the ! woi'ld, he saith it is a*fortuitous'concourse of atoms, and a derned bad concourse at that; he believes that he is old,-and he suffers in his heart, seeing that his moustache bears him not out, and that is Fun. He returns to the world on his own invitation, and now he is a man of the world; he knows the wickedness of all things and the doctrine of mixetT drinks; his trousers ai'e trousers of truth, and his coats are coats of correctness, and that is Fun. He drinks-the champagne of the Gaul | and the soda-water that is naught but j marble-dust and vanity; he goes to the' play; he saith "My dear," unto thej dancing girls; he gives his head to Herodias, and pays for the charger, and ] that is Fun. i And having done this for a space, he i i 3 grown old, and his blcod is turned to gout in his veins; lie sits within che I club window in the sun; he catches the young men by the skirts of their coats and tells them he hath .been a devil in his time, and that is Fun. And iv the last day he is cased in rosewood decked out with silver, ai.d laid in the earth. Ahd when the yjung men hear he is dead they shall say cro unto another: "Let us'pour a libation to him, being in the nature of a shifter before dinner, for -h© was .Fun.'- — "Puck."