"Dinner is Now On."

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 24 July 1915, Page 19

"Dinner is Now On."

Strangled by thirst and fierce privation, That's how the dead men die. Out oni Moneygrub's furthest station, That's how the dead men die. Hard-faced greybeards, youngster's callow, Some mounds cared! for, others fallow, Some buried deep, yet others shallow, Some having but the sky. IAM reminded of the above bit of verse, written some little time before the author hanged himeelf, by the spectacle of a pile of greasy dishes in a Jlocal sink and the very large food display necessary to convince a email family in a city that it isn't starving. And having hung the milk-billy on, the book outside the backdoor, and the wet plate towel on the oven door in. the kitchen, I turn a thought to the one tin-plate of yore andl tlie riverbank where one might scour the signs of food from it with a handiful of sand. Anyone who has gazed on a detached human stomach must have wondered how it could cope with the breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper ite late owner forced on it every day. Any ordinary city person will gleefully addl to his set meals the average counter-lunch and the commonplace afternoon tea. You will admit that man is "fearfully and wonderfully made." A doctor chap told me the other day that a normal man might keep himself in perfect working health on about ten ounceis of good, eouind, hard tucker a day, with anything up to a> pint of water to quench his thirst. Perhaps he is right. Anyhow, I know that a man has remained fit and! well and as hard as a "bit of pin wire" on a few ounces of baked! flour and waiter a day, the same being varied for three months by flour porridge only. He would have eaten anything on edible earth, but there wasn't anything to eat. I read a recipe in a cook-book the other day. It told one how to make "petites marmites," whatever they are. The only thing that struck me about it was that it was for six people, that it took a few days to prepare, that the quantities used were sufficient to feed twenty people, and that the money expended would keep a fifteen-stone baishman in hard working trim for six weeks. This constant feeding is a strange business. The aboriginal throws his snake on the fire, waits until it frizzles, and then eats it. He seems to enjoy it as well and to gain as much strength, nutriment, and happiness out of his ha'nporth of reptile as a Cabinet Minister does from his thirty-two and sixpenny banquet. By the way, the Cabinet Minister would decide foir muddy water in place of ohampaigne if he were mortally thirsty. You've seen the fat yellow grubs that live a hermetical life in rotten wood ? Have you ever tried them? They are more delicate in their selection of sustenance than oysters , , and , they give the crayfish scavenger of the deep, and the beloved of epicures—a. big start as cleanly feeders. But you'd hate to see grubs dished up at the boardinghouse this evening—what? Any newly fledged doctor will tell yiou that you should be regular at your meals, but the wild man who hunts bis tucker eats when he catches it. The gentle blackfellow makes hie miseus carry home the edlibles, and when he has masticated all the meat off the bones he throws the remnant over his skouldler so that his lady friends may polish their teeth and remain in. good, sound health to lump other 'possums, and beam?, and snakes, and tihings home to the mia mia.

(By 149.)

One tribe I happened to have honoured with an examination used to distend! its collective abdomen in off seasons with a mixture of mud and ants. None of these people would have known what to do with patede fore gras, and they would probably have used "petites marmites" to grease their bodies with. Most of us think that flavour is sustenance. Take a fat city main ten days' trek into the bush. Provide him with a three days' hunger. Prodlice a loaf of bread a week oldi and as hard as rock. Prodluce also the daintiest possibfe jelly straight out of the cooler. Which, will he tackle? A chap I knew was brought up in the ordinary way. That is to say,

he ate food enough for four men every <lay. He subsequently drifted into the wild. He dropped across a sbepherdi's hut. He had not tasted meat for some months, and he pointedly asked for some. The shepherd opened! his bag safe and showed' him a. small collection of fleshleiss sheep ribs l —all that remained' of a salted forequarter. No clog could have cmiwibed bones with greater vigour or more enjoyment than this "gently nurtured" man. That fellowwould have demanded in city life three or four heavy meals, totalling about six pounds and a few pints. If he found! that he couldii't manage the best part of a pound of steak at dimmer he would feel tibat starvation was staring Hum in the face. Once upon a time there was a mob of starved niggers. Their town had been boseiged, and the white people had collared all the rations, for the white people are God's people and must be provided for. A few niggers died of starvation , , and! white chaplains held* services every Sunday to keep the spirits of the people who had. all the tucker from being depressed at the deaths of the niggers. An army came -along, and a few men fell dead. A number of bullocks, mules, and lionises fell dead, too, and the starving niggers swooped down aaid ate them raw—the beasts, not the people. Most of the beasts had diied of disease, but the nigger® didn't protest, and as no more niggers died I conclude all the animals' had been given a clean bill of health by the authorities.

Not long since I listened to a most interesting lecture about honey hoes, and this reminded me of a certain man's antipathy to 'honey.. He and others were camped in river country, and the rivers grew into-

rushing eeas because the snows had; melted during a night. So the camp was out off from every chance of stores. There was no .ammunition in the camp, and the wretched marsupial refused to oblige by stepping into traps or putting his head through snares. Everybody wandered round with very "straight fronts," and hoped 1 tlhe rivers would go down before it was necessary to give in and help the ants to an unexpected! feed. But Jack found a hollow tree with about four feet of honey in it, and so some more or less worthless lives were saved. But honey for breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon "tea," and supper, palls and leads to faction' fights and misery and peculiar inward , feelings. It didn't raise the spirits of the camip when Jack tried) to ride a pack-horse across the river—without success. When one of the party dolefully crawled along the riverbank to see if Jack's bodly had by any chance got stuck up in a, snag he didn't find Jack, but he found a live bullock bogged 1 to the hide in the mud. Honey went out of favour, and I might gay that before the river went down much of the dead bullock wiasn't really dead, and that one remembers more enticing banquets.