The Empty Stomach.

Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 49, 14 August 1915, Page 15

The Empty Stomach.

DESPAIRINGLY the scribe bung round the neck of his friend and asked, "What's a fellow to write about, anyway? The elections are all over, I've written about all the things that ever happened to me —amd I'm stumped." The friend unfastened the grip roaindi his neck and took the scribbler to an inquest. A constable was eating a sandwich and there was a bottle of whisky on the mantelpiece. The bottle of whisky had been found on the corpse of a main who was retrieved from the harbour, the meat in the sandwich was from tbe rib of a pig, and the bread had been made with the potatoes of commerce a>nd the wheat of the field. The friendl dared the scribe to findl inspiration in the properties here named. But take the pig inspiration, for instance. What a story could be written on plain pig, from the melodramatic porkers who went down the hill filled with devils cast

out of biblical folk to the large "Captain Cooks" filled with the lead of the pig hunters and the teeth of the hunt dogs! Pigs take me to South Australia, the jungles of India, the mealie fields of South Africa and! the fern ridges of New Zealand. The Australian cocky is short of meat. That is to say there is only about six pounds of rank pork left in the brine barrel. He has told the two hired men and hie own family that Sunday will be pig killing day, and has warned them to prepare and not to do anything foolish like going to church. In the meantime he sends the children out to set traps for rabbits and to keep a wary eye open for snakes)—carpet snakes preferable because they are the largest kind) of Australian snake, and therefore make a bigger feed for the pigs. The small "tigers" and "blacks" and "greys," and the other venomous kinds are not so fat. Babbits make good feed, too, especially if the rabbits have been poisoned. Pigs don't mind, and the person in the town stores who buys the delicious pink and white bacon doesn't ask. But come along to the pig pen, for it is the Sunday mentioned above. The

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oooky himself is a large man, and from the distance he seems gigantic, for he is clothed in an old frock belonging to the missus. The missus has already got the big copper boiling under the tree by the well, and the kiddies are armed with pot lidis, pieces of old hoes and anything else that will' scrape hair 'from hide. Did you ever try to oatoh pigs in a big stye? See the big fellow with the ring in his nose and the off hind leg white. (Bit of Berkshire in him I 'speot.) The large cocky makes a dive for the leg and steps on the skirt he is wearing to save his greasy moleskins . Of course he falls down, and the time I .remember him the best was when he fell 1 into the trough and he was the first animal to be scraped. The hired nuan ia nimbler and gets the pig. A more or less deft twist and the pig is on its back Young Paddy, the eldest son, is quick with the rope, and while the pig

squeals in mortal dread Paddy slips the noose over his tusks and pulls it taut on his top jaws. Then the crowd drives the pig to the old 1 dray that is standing outside, and pull his nose up skyward by the simple process of passing the rope through the backboard iron. The pig's neck is stretched, but he still squeals. The cocky has been scraped by this time, and he has drawn his knife. There is a little depression in the throat of. a pig, and the gentleman with the knife pushes the blade suddenly in a downward direction into the depression. The rope is loosened. The pig is happy now and) doesn't squeal. He feels weak and wobbles, and if you give him food) he will take it in his mouth and it wil run out of the place where the cocky has stricken him. The pig doesn't mind dying as long as he can die eating. # People don't waste much food on„dying pigs, and there is the water getting cold anyway. This is where the family comes in. Souse goes the Berkshire and buzz go the potlidls, until in a few minutes from the dining hour of Mr Pig he is cleaner than he has ever been before. Pig is an entrancing subject, especially when he is fed' on

carpet snakes arid poisoned rabbits. One recalls a troop train that was bringing quite a quantity of soldiers out of the valley of death (or words to that effect) into the haven of rest and canteens. There was an Army Service supply carriage shunted on to a line at (we will say) Wildebeestespruit siding. There were about thirty-nine gallon kegs of rum on the truck, and a soldier man commanded a "boy" to annex one. The boy slipped round the rear of the truck, and being a powerful Zulu easily pushed the keg into a bag, and on to his great shoulder. Then he crawled over the buffers and was halted by a sentry with a fixed bayonet at the charge. "What yer got there, boy?" he roared. "Pig baas!" whined the boy. The soldier felt tbe round side of the "pig" (which dlid not squela), a.nd there were ma>ny "rashers" in various water bottles that night. Funmy thing how one pig leads to another. You remember the time you and me worked 1 for O'Gruel on the little selection near the big lignum swamp up the Murrimbidgee about thirty miles from Euston ? Yes. Well the night you got a job with O'GrueT who was haymaldimg at the time he was in a terrible quandary for a place to give you a "doss" down. If you remember I slept in the box stripper and killed' a tiger snake just before I turned in. You were more particular, being college bred. O'Gruel went the rounds of the "out-bnild(ings," including the cartshed, the "stable" built of gum

boughs and the other appointments of a selection of the early nineties. At last he took you to the pigstye, where dwelt, if you remember, the family pig. Then he went to the kitchen door and called to hie wife, "Mary." Mary scraped the flour off her arms with a piece of stick and came to the door. "Phwat." "Can we take the pig in here t'night, because Oi want the stoye for the new mahn?" Andl you remember how the pig went to bed in the kitchen and you slept on the bank of the river and fought mosquitoels alll niglit? My word but those were the days! What? Then that other time when the big 'boar with the six inch tusks was discovered in the fern patch on Runga Runga, in the Wairarapa and' how you being fresh to large New Zealand pigs swore to get his tusks, and how you didn't know he was there until he grunted from behindl a bush and how startled you were when you let the old Winchester fall and you tripped over that

root, ami how you never got a chance with tliie gun again until the old boar had chewed 1 a lump out of your near leg. Funny how you try to disguise that limp nowadays, and how particular you are about the height of your collar. Then' one can't forget all the history associated with the bit _of bread in the policeman's sandwich. The bit of bread! suggests all we strive.for. We live for our stomachs and fill' them so that we may live. Can't you see the illimitable field of corn and the horses toiling in. the strippers and the drivers choked with dust. And' the fifteen shillings a week slave at the handle of the winnower turning, turning, turning from "jackass" till sundown just because he wants to fill his stomach with bits of bread made from the wheat. Is he likely to disrememiber the rancidi flyblown beef and the awful damper for which he toiled and 1 which however he was glad enough to get when his throat was full of dust of the dry Austral-' ian wheat paddock and the pulverised husks of the staff of life? Didn't his nose bleed with the dlust, and didn't his moleskins stand up stiff with sweat when he pulled them on in the cold of four tbirty o'clock in the morning? Did he feel religious for instance when he chased horses in the early grey and a two thousand acre paddock, amd) did he sing hymns of thankfulness when, after he had jammed' the stripper team in the angle of the fence nearest the homestead when the whole mob broke back and cleared like a bush fire to the far end of the paddock?

And won't you understand! that the gigantic armies of the great Powers are as useless as a maggot in a bit of flyblown meat without the field of corn and the policeman's sandwich, or all! that it means and typifies? You who have got into the habit of finding more tucker than you want every time you want it; who have never sat down in despair and chewed the remnant of your boots; who, havo not looked upon a stinking water hole as a more beautiful thing than 25 El Dorados rolled into one; you who kicked up hell's delight when you lost your collar stud and grizzled) because it rained on your hat—think about the things that matter. When you are disposed to admire the heroism of a fat politician who yaps through a long night instead of going to bed, try to imagine him in the middle of the Never' Never with his year's salary but no tucker. We become so unused to real! things thateven our imagination becomes a caricature ot the real things. Anybody who believes that brains govern the universe has only got to destroy the tucker of the universe and watch the! brain governing the universe. If I were a parson I'd knock ott preaching soul. I'd! get out the stomach a© a topic that would outlive every subject ever touched upon.