Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 081

Transcript

When the Great Pro Consul, as he is termed, came to Canterbury in the sixties, he reviewed the troops in Hagley Park, opposite the State School. Joe Stringer was his orderly. When the army was going through some evolution the Pro Consul who wore a white plume of cock’s feathers, like Henry of Navarre, was galloping with his aides de camp and so on, to some particular point, when one of those unseasonable winds that used to blow over the open plains took charge of the ornament, and they saw “his white plume wave”, for off it flew before the breeze, and Joe full pelt after it – it was very undignified. It was, I think, upon that visit he gave, or promised, that grand gift to the “unborn thousands”, the silver grey rabbit, the joy of unborn rabbiters.