gh, a mocking shout and
whimsical wink, he went out into dreary Galway--a homeless wanderer.

Of Maggie's death very little is known. Some say she died of hay-fever;
others say it was nasal catarrh; but only her old mother, with a woman's
unerring instinct, guessed the truth: in reality she died of a broken
heart and a burnt scone.

THE EDUCATION OF RUPERT PLINGE

[Illustration: RUPERT PLINGE, AGED 9 MONTHS AND 4 YEARS, RESPECTIVELY]

Under the blue-grey shadow of the Didcot Bowles bungalow, with beech
trees and pussy willows fringing the banks of the river Sippe which
runs, or ran before it was dammed, down past old Caesar Earwhacker's
bicycle shed, three miles from the village of Sagrada, Conn., to the
West and eight miles from Roosefelt under the hill to the North leaving
the South free for a Black Rising and the East for the Civil War;--there
in the seventeenth cottage, with green shutters, below the bridge--with
the pine cones occasionally tap-tapping against the pantry window--owing
to a strange combination of circumstances Rupert Plinge's elder sister
first saw the light of day. Rupert himself being born ten months later
at Guffle Hoe.

Had he been born on the lower reaches of the Yukon and baptised by a
remittance man in a Wesleyan Chapel, he would probably not have
suffered so acutely from the cold as he did at Guffle Hoe, nor could he
have been more persistently victimised and handicapped in after life by
bronchial asthma and pyorrhoea of the gums.

Though coldness for a baby was unpleasant in 1870 it was infinitely more
tiresome in 1592 and perfectly devastating in 1306. But Guffle Hoe--try
to reflect if possible the troglodytic fun of being born within earshot
and eyeshot of people such as Granville Boo, General Udby, Ex-President
Sumplethock, Senator Mills-Tweeper and Harriet Beecher Stowe; and places
such as Mount Knitting, Mudlake West, Pigeon Park and Appleblossom
Villa. These influential factors combined were undoubtedly the
foundations of the enormous mathematical ability which became apparent
long before the boy attained the age of three, but unfortunately for the
level development of his mentality, the repulsive plainness of Senator
Mills-Tweeper coupled with the innate idiocy of General Udby, completely
overshadowed the girlish charm of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Had Rupert
been consulted would he have liked playing the game at all--holding the
cards in the wrong hand as he did from the ve