Chapter 36 - Page 2

prayer,
It would ease her heart till she met him there.

How it would relieve his mother's heart
To see her son from this world depart,
And hear his noble words of love,
As he left this world for that above.

Now it will relieve his mother's heart,
For her son is laid in our graveyard;
For now she knows that his grave is near,
She will not shed so many tears.

Although she knows not that it was her son,
For his coffin could not be opened
It might be someone in his place,
For she could not see his noble face.

December, 17. Reached Sydney.

December, 19. In the train. Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim
creature, with teeth which made his mouth look like a neglected
churchyard. He had solidified hair--solidified with pomatum; it was all
one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes--made of some
kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him smell like the
very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed
and broken and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation gold--they
had made black disks on the linen. Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation
gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watch-chain of
imitation gold. I judge that he couldn't tell the time by it, for he
asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which had been gay
when it was young; 5-o'clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and
marvelously soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the
ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a novelty--an
imitation dude. He would have been a real one if he could have afforded
it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his
expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a
dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a
sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so
enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied
daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me
that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing
everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his
four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter
four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity
--just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He
stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on
the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose
as the Prince and work his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he
would indolently watch the blue films curling up from his cigarette, and
inhale the stench, and look so grateful; and would flip the ash away with
the