"
Is this what we find? I think so.
Speculations....
I never pass through Pisa without calling to mind certain rat-hunts in
company with J. O. M., who was carried out of the train at this very
station, dead, because he refused to follow my advice. He was my
neighbour at one time; he lived near the river Mole in relative
seclusion; coursing rats with Dandie Dinmonts was the only form of
exercise which entailed no strain on his weakened constitution. How he
loved it!
This O---- was a man of mystery and violence, who threw himself into
every kind of human activity with superhuman, Satanic, zest; traveller,
sportsman, financier, mining expert, lover of wine and women, of books
and prints; one of the founders, I believe, of the Rhodesia Company;
faultlessly dressed, infernally rich and, when he chose--which was
fairly often--preposterously brutal. Neither manner nor face were
winning. He was swarthy almost to blackness, quite un-English in looks,
with rather long hair, a most menacing moustache and the fiercest eyes
imaginable; a king of the gipsies, so far as features went. Something
sinister hung about his personality. A predatory type, unquestionably;
never so happy as when pitting his wits or strength against others,
tracking down this or that--by choice, living creatures. He had taken
life by the throat, and excesses of various kinds having shattered his
frame, there was an end, for the time being, of deer-stalking and
tigers; it was a tame period of rat-hunts with those terriers whose
murderous energies were a pis aller, yielding a sort of vicarious
pleasure.
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