Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden

[73] CAPITULUM XI It was a sad farewell when my career in the Church again dragged me from the arms of my re- luctant family. Good-bye, sunny shores of the Hidden Island of the Caribbean Sea ! Good-bye, delicious tirly-whirly of my lovely sister ! Good-bye, incestuous ingle-nook of my mother, fiery flap- doodle of my manly sire ! Never again perchance shall I see your dear faces : never again grope in your happy hunting-grounds for the game of grap- ple-my-belly. With a heavy heart I set sail, and after a pleas- ant but uneventful voyage landed once more in England, to find that my little brochure on “ Cunts ; a few methods of fuckin’ ’em ” which had attracted the favourable notice of all classes, had been su- perseded by the lengthy and to my mind tedious monograph of a Turkish Mullah, entitled “ Arseholes : some thoughts about sucking me.” The table of my library (I was at this time vicar of Buckingham) was absolutely littered with ap- peals from the various dignitaries of the Church, including the Pope himself, urging me to devote my energies to preparing a counter-blast to the pre- sumption of this audacious heretic. I complied. I issued a public challenge to him to compete with me on the floor of the Albert Hall, he to practice his dogma, and I mine. He refused, which was already something. When, next spring, I brought out my monumental Treatise on Heights and Hollows, em- bracing the entire subject, he again sank into de- served disesteem, and, vainly striving to restore his