Frank W. Boreham - Faces in the Fire: And Other Fancies

It was a chilling experience, that first glimpse of New Zealand! Hourafter hour the great ship held on her way up the Cook Straits amidstscenery that made me shudder and that scowled me out of countenance.Rugged, massive, inhospitable, and bare, how sternly those wild andmountainous landscapes contrasted with the quiet beauty that I hadsurveyed from the same decks as the ship had dropped down Channel! Ishaded my eyes with my hands and swept the strange horizon at everypoint, but nowhere could I see a sign of habitationno man; no beast;no sheltering roof; no winding road; no welcoming column of smoke! Andwhen, in the twilight of that still autumn evening, I at lengthdescended the gangway, and set foot for the first time on the land of myadoption, I found myselftwelve thousand miles from homein a countryin which not a soul knew me, and in which I knew no single soul. It wasnot an exhilarating sensation.

That was on March 11, 1895twenty-one years ago to-night. Thoseone-and-twenty years have been almost evenly divided between the oldmanse at Mosgiel, in New Zealand, and my present Tasmanian home. As Isit here, and let my memory play among the years, I smile at the odd wayin which these southern lands have belied that first austere impression.In my fire to-night I see such crowds of facesthe faces of those withwhom I have laughed and cried, and camped and played, and worked andworshipped in the course of these one-and-twenty years. There arefancy-faces, too; the folk of other latitudes; the faces I have neverseen; the friends my pen has brought me. I cannot write to all to-night;so I set aside this book as a memento of the times we have spenttogether. If, by good hap, it reaches any of them, let them regard it asa shake of the hand for the sake of auld lang syne. And if, in additionto cementing old friendships, it creates new ones, how doubly happy Ishall be!

FRANK W. BOREHAM.

Hobart, Tasmania.

Everything depends on keeping up the supply of bombshells. It will be asad day for us all when there are no more bombs to burst, no more shocksto be sustained, no more sensations to be experienced, no more thrillsto be enjoyed. Fancy being condemned to reside in a world that isbankrupt of astonishments, a world that no longer has it in its power tostartle you, a world that has nothing up its sleeve! It would be likeoccupying a seat at a conjuring entertainment at which the conjurer hadexhausted all his tricks, but did not like to tell you so! When I was asmall boy I used to be mildly amused by the antics of a performing bearthat occasionally visited our locality. A sickly-looking foreigner ledthe poor brute by a string. Its claws were cut, and its teeth drawn. Bydint of a few kicks and cuffs it was persuaded to dance a melancholykind of jig, and then shamble round with a basket in search of a fewhalf-pence. I remember distinctly that, as I watched the unhappycreature's dismal performance, I tried to imagine what the animal wouldhave looked like had no cruel captor removed him from his native lair.The mental contrast was a very painful one. Yet it was not half sopainful as the contrast between the world as it is and a world that hadrun out of bombshells. A world that could no longer surprise us would bea world with its claws cut and its teeth drawn. Half the fun of wakingup in the morning is the feeling that you have come upon a day that isbrand new, a day that the world has never seen before, a day that iscertain to do things that no other day has ever done. Half the pleasureof welcoming a new-born baby is the absolute certainty that here youhave a packet of amazing surprises. An individuality is here; a thingthat never was before; you cannot argue from any other child to thisone; the only thing that you can predict with confidence about thischild is that it will do things that were never done, or never done inthe same way, since this old world of ours began. Here is novelty,originality, an infinity of bewildering possibility. Each mother thinksthat there never was a baby like her baby; and most certainly therenever was. As long as the stock of days keeps up, and as long as thesupply of babies does not peter out, there will be no lack ofbombshells. I visited the other day the ruins of an old prison. I sawamong other things the dark cells in which, in the bad old days,prisoners languished in solitary confinement. Charles Reade and otherwriters have told us how, in those black holes, convicts adopted allkinds of ingenious expedients to secure themselves against losing theirreason in the desolate darkness. They tossed buttons about and gropedafter them; they tore up their clothes and counted the pieces; they dida thousand other things, and went mad in spite of all their pains. Nowwhat is this horror of the darkness? Let us analyse it. Wherein does itdiffer from blindness? Why did insanity overtake these solitary men? Thehorror of the darkness was not fear. A child dreads the dark because hethinks that wolves and hobgoblins infest it. But these men had no suchterrors. The thing that unbalanced them was the maddening monotony ofthe darkness. Nothing happened. In the light something happens everysecond. A thousand impressions are made upon the mind in the course ofevery minute. Each sensation, though it be of no more importance thanthe buzz of a fly at the window-pane, the flutter of a paper to thefloor, or the sound of a footfall on the street, represents a surprise.It is a mental jolt. It transfers the attention from one object to anentirely different one. We pass in less than a second from the buzz ofthe fly to the flutter of the paper, and again from the flutter of thepaper to the sound of the footfall. Any man who could count the separateobjects that occupied his attention in the course of a single momentwould be astonished at their variety and multiplicity. But in the darkcell there are no sensations. The eye cannot see; the ear cannot hear.Not one of the senses is appealed to. The mind is accustomed to flitfrom sensation to sensation like a butterfly flitting from flower toflower, but infinitely faster. But in this dark cell it languishes likea captive butterfly in a cardboard box. If you hold me under water Ishall die, because my lungs can no longer do the work they have alwaysbeen accustomed to do. In the dark cell the mind finds itself in thesame predicament. It is drowned in inky air. The mind lives onsensations; but here there are no sensations. And if the world getsshorn of its surprise-power, it will become a maddening place to livein. We only exist by being continually startled. We are kept alive bythe everlasting bursting of bombshells.

I am not so much concerned, however, with the ability of the world toafford us a continuous series of thrills as with my own capacity to besurprised. The tendency is to lose the power of astonishment. I am toldthat, in battle, the moment in which a man finds himself for the firsttime under fire is a truly terrifying experience. But after awhile thenew-comer settles down to it, and, with shells bursting all around him,he goes about his tasks as calmly as on parade. This idiosyncrasy ofours may be a very fine thing under such circumstances, but under otherconditions it has the gravest elements of danger. As I sit here writing,a baby crawls upon the floor. It is good fun watching him. He plays withthe paper band that fell from a packet of envelopes. He puts it roundhis wrist like a bracelet. He tears it, and lo, the bracelet of a momentago is a long ribbon of coloured paper. He is astounded. His wide-openeyes are a picture. The telephone rings. He looks up with approval.Anything that rings or rattles is very much to his taste. I go over tohis new-found toy, and begin talking to it. He is dumbfounded. Myaltercation with the telephone completely bewilders him. Whilst I amthus occupied, he moves towards my vacant chair. He tries to pullhimself up by it, but pulls it over on to himself. The savagery of thething appals him; he never dreamed of an attack from such a source. Inwhat a world of wonder is he living! Bombs are bursting all around himall day long. A baby's life must be a thrillingly sensational affair.