[Illustration: _Maori Woman and Child. Fashionably tattooed lip._]
Here the notes record that there had been a half-hour's recess, during which Leo Bergin mentions that he enjoyed a pleasant chat with the poetess Vauline, that she was very charmingly inquisitive, and that while he confessed his lack of eloquence as compared with that of Oseba, he thought Zelania had lost nothing through his modesty.
Leo remarks that he showed the poetess many photos of the outer world, especially some fine ones of Zelania--among others, some of the leading statesmen and jurists--"all at the same sitting."
But I will ring off Leo Bergin, and have Amoora Oseba continue his observations, as per Leo's notes boiled down--by the fire of genius.
Mr. Oseba, on rising, is noted to have observed that men were human, to which I partially agree.
Taking from the immortal Robert as a text,
"Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn,"
he delivered a long and eloquent oration on man's relations to this world; how the earth is the storehouse of Nature; how all that we call wealth, and the things that contribute to our health, comfort, and well-being are the products of the toil of men; and he then observed how few of us get much exercise out of this useful occupation.
As a fact, he conveyed the rather startling information that, as relating to actual production, fully nine-tenths of us were on vacation, or, to put a point on it, that every toiler was carrying about nine more easy-going souls on his back. These remarks applied to general productive industry.
Mr. Oseba explains "how in sparsely settled countries, where there are animals, primitive man lives by the chase, where there are tameable animals he becomes partially tamed and lives by his flocks, and where there is good soil--as population increased--the people turn to agriculture, and with more culture and more people industry becomes specialised, and commerce arises to put on the finishing touches.
"But," he argued, "as man clings to the muscles with which his ancestors flapped their ears, so he clings to all the habits practised by man in the past. He lives by the chase as long as there is room, he reduces nomadic industry to a science, and by co-operation all contribute to the advancement of the higher ideal.