Far Away And Long Ago A History Of My Early Life By W. H. Hudson








































































 -  It seems an easy thing to do: the bird is
plainly exhausted, panting, his wings hanging, as he lopes on - Page 53
Far Away And Long Ago A History Of My Early Life By W. H. Hudson - Page 53 of 186 - First - Home

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It Seems An Easy Thing To Do:

The bird is plainly exhausted, panting, his wings hanging, as he lopes on, yet no sooner is the man within striking distance than the sudden motion comes into play, and the bird as by a miracle is now behind instead of at the side of the horse.

And before the horse going at top speed can be reined in and turned round, the rhea has had time to recover his wind and get a hundred yards away or more. It is on account of this tricky instinct of the rhea that the gauchos say, "El avestruz es el mas _gaucho_ de los animales," which means that the ostrich, in its resourcefulness and the tricks it practises to save itself when hard pressed, is as clever as the gaucho knows himself to be.

CHAPTER VII

MY FIRST VISIT TO BUENOS AYRES

Happiest time - First visit to the Capital - Old and New Buenos Ayres - Vivid impressions - Solitary walk - How I learnt to go alone - Lost - The house we stayed at and the sea-like river - Rough and narrow streets - Rows of posts - Carts and noise - A great church festival - Young men in black and scarlet - River scenes - Washerwomen and their language - Their word-fights with young fashionables - Night watchmen - A young gentleman's pastime - A fishing dog - A fine gentleman seen stoning little birds - A glimpse of Don Eusebio, the Dictator's fool.

The happiest time of my boyhood was at that early period, a little past the age of six, when I had my own pony to ride on, and was allowed to stay on his back just as long and go as far from home as I liked. I was like the young bird when on first quitting the nest it suddenly becomes conscious of its power to fly. My early flying days were, however, soon interrupted, when my mother took me on my first visit to Buenos Ayres; that is to say, the first I remember, as I must have been taken there once before as an infant in arms, since we lived too far from town for any missionary-clergyman to travel all that distance just to baptize a little baby. Buenos Ayres is now the wealthiest, most populous, Europeanized city in South America: what it was like at that time these glimpses into a far past will serve to show. Coming as a small boy of an exceptionally impressionable mind, from that green plain where people lived the simple pastoral life, everything I saw in the city impressed me deeply, and the sights which impressed me the most are as vivid in my mind to-day as they ever were. I was a solitary little boy in my rambles about the streets, for though I had a younger brother who was my only playmate, he was not yet five, and too small to keep me company in my walks. Nor did I mind having no one with me. Very, very early in my boyhood I had acquired the habit of going about alone to amuse myself in my own way, and it was only after years, when my age was about twelve, that my mother told me how anxious this singularity in me used to make her.

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