THE RISE AND FALL OF H. G.-S. AND A. M. C. 153 



camp ovens there is no better bread in the world, mutton, potatoes, 

 and duff. It was a delightful existence ; there were no cares, there were 

 to be none. 



From the time they had forgathered at Rugby H. G.-S. on some 

 bug-hunting business, of course out of bounds, A. M. C. with dogs he 

 used to rat with retrievers, I remember equally of course forbidden by 

 the school authorities, these two young gentlemen had determined to 

 live the simple life. The simple life as they envisaged it was to preclude 

 all thought on disagreeable subjects such as in the past, say, Latin and 

 Greek, Euclid and Algebra, and in the future anything connected with 

 figures or business. They were of the type to whom the Hypothetics 

 taught in our Colleges of Unreason were particularly odious and dis- 

 tasteful. The writer's scheme of life was to work hard in the daytime, 

 and in the evenings must he confess it ? to write verse, a fatal habit 

 which his relatives deplored. If he must have a vice, they argued, let 

 him rather drink ; many drunken flock-masters had prospered, but never 

 a one who perpetrated verse. Drunkards, too, had been known to reform, 

 but the verse habit was ineradicable ; they regarded him as a lost soul, 

 predestined to the pit. 



Enthusiasm for the poets on my part, enthusiasm for football he 

 was a magnificent Rugby forward on that of my partner, 1 were assets 

 not particularly likely to assist in the development of an up-country 

 sheep station. 



From the start things went wrong. To begin with, the place had 

 been purchased for us in late August, a time of the year when it was 

 impossible to muster on account of the approaching lambing. Instead, 

 therefore, of collecting the sheep from every part of the run and count- 

 ing them in the yards, we took delivery "off the books" that is, we 

 accepted the flock on the previous shearing and lambing tally. 9000 

 sheep had been shorn, 1500 lambs had been docked ; there should, there- 

 fore, have been 10,500 sheep on the property. From a South Island 

 Canterbury point of view, a 10 per cent mortality was an almost 

 inconceivable death-rate. It was thought perfectly safe to reckon the 

 losses on Tutira during the previous twelve months at a tenth of the 

 whole flock. On this basis of calculation the station was bought and 



1 My partner, like D'Artagnan, hated verse as he hated Latin. "An Address to my 

 Banker," paraphrasing Goldsmith's lines, and beginning " Sweet source of all my joy and woe, 

 thou found'st me poor and left me so," was, however, considered " not half bad." 



