Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden

to turn back to the beginning as often as they find necessary to produce the desired erection — on the principle of song music, and then finish as below, as it were at the close of the last verse. The child was then unstrapped, and allowed to bathe her injured seat, while the fashionable schoolmistress and the fast milliner sat on a volup- tuous sofa, and refreshed their flagging energies with wine and cake, talking over their past adven- tures and planning fresh scenes of lust and luxury. But my own experiences were of a more serious sort. To my mind flagellation is a mere mockery if the victims survive it. I had attained my majority when my father resolved to give a great treat to celebrate it. His numerous negro slaves — yes, friend H..msw..th, I know you think I am lying, but my father, though living in France at the time of my birth, had subsequently bought a plantation in the West Indies, and I had dutifully gone out there for the joyful celebration — his numerous negro slaves — as I said before — oh yes, you are a clever fellow, I know slavery has been abolished in most of the West Indies, but my father lived on a secret island, which is not on the map, being protected from observation by the fogs produced by the in- cessant farting of its sea-faring population — his numerous negro slaves, — I hope everything is quite clear ! — had been detected a little while be- fore in a ramified and deep-seated conspiracy to shit outside the tubs of molasses, and thus rob their employer of the fruits of his careful system of dieting them on the refuse of the sugar-cane, and he was resolved to make their punishment an ex- ample to the whole island and at the same time to celebrate my majority in a manner befitting the auspicious occasion. You will probably think it worth while to devote a whole chapter to this, and another to the preg- nancy of Leila. I will therefore break off and put in [66]