Successful Recitations by Wei Zhi
Chapter 1 1
Biggs was missing: Biggs had vanished; all the town was in a ferment;
For if ever man was looked to for an edifying end,
With due mortuary outfit, and a popular interment,
It was Biggs, the universal guide, philosopher, and friend.
But the man had simply vanished; speculation wove no tissue
That would hold a drop of water; each new theory fell flat.
It was most unsatisfactory, and hanging on the issue
Were a thousand wagers ranging from a pony to a hat.
Not a trace could search discover in the township or without it,
And the river had been dragged from morn till night with no avail.
His continuity had ceased, and that was all about it,
And there wasn't ev'n a grease-spot left behind to tell the tale.
That so staid a man as Biggs was should be swallowed up in mystery
Lent an increment to wonder-he who trod no doubtful paths,
But stood square to his surroundings, with no cloud upon his history,
As the much-respected lessee of the Corporation Baths.
His affairs were all in order; since the year the alligator
With a startled river bather made attempt to coalesce,
The resulting wave of decency had greater grown and greater,
And the Corporation Baths had been a marvellous success.
Nor could trouble in the household solve the riddle of his clearance,
For his bride was now in heaven, and the issue of the match
Was a patient drudge whose virtues were as plain as her appearance-
Just the sort whereto no scandal could conceivably attach.
So the Whither and the Why alike mysterious were counted;
And as Faith steps in to aid where baffled Reason must retire,
There were those averred so good a man as Biggs might well have
mounted
Up to glory like Elijah in a chariot of fire!
For indeed he was a good man; when he sat beside the portal
Of the Bath-house at his pigeon-hole, a saint within a frame,
We used to think his face was as the face of an immortal,
As he handed us our tickets, and took payment for the same.
And, Oh, the sweet advice with which he made of such occasion
A duplicate detergent for our morals and our limbs-
For he taught us that decorum was the essence of salvation,
And that cleanliness and godliness were merely synonyms;
But that open-air ablution in the river was a treason
To the purer instincts, fit for dogs and aborigines,
And that wrath at such misconduct was the providential reason
For the jaws of alligators and the tails of stingarees.
But, alas, our friend was gone, our guide, philosopher, and tutor,
And we doubled our potations, just to clear the inner view;
But we only saw the darklier through the bottom of the pewter,
And the mystery seemed likewise to be multiplied by two.
And the worst was that our failure to unriddle the enigma
In the "rags" of rival towns was made a byword and a scoff,
Till each soul in the community felt branded with the stigma
Of the unexplained suspicion of poor Biggs's taking off.
So a dozen of us rose and swore this thing should be no longer:
Though the means that Nature furnished had been tried without
result,
There were forces supersensual that higher were and stronger,
And with consentaneous clamour we pronounced for the occult.
Then Joe Thomson slung a tenner, and Jack Robinson a tanner,
And each according to his means respectively disbursed;
And a letter in your humble servant's most seductive manner
Was despatched to Sludge the Medium, recently of Darlinghurst.
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