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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
Prisoners and Captives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 4 March 1886.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, p. 4).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: A lightly corrected galley proof of this article was sent by RK to W. C. Crofts and is now in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress (Carpenter Collection). The heading, ostensibly from the medieval legend of Prester John, is RK's imitation, suited to the story he tells.
‘Prisoners and Captives’ was reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, ii, 1098–101.
“Now in Prester John's country there be certain sillie Fowls which having wandered within the boundaries of this Sandie Sea, can in no wise escape, but flie miserable thereabove till they die.”
“I can't get out” quoth the Starling, and Sterne, maudlin sentimentalist that he was, wept.
Fellow Starlings, neither you nor I nor our mates nor our nestlings can get out; and Sterne, who would have immortalized us – had he no liaison on hand – is dead. The bars of our captivity are hard to endure, and the Black Water which divides us from the pleasant hedgerows, whence we came, broad and impassable. We are the “sillie fowle” of Prester John's country, who have flown eastward with a light heart, and find, all too late, that there is no return.
How does it come about? Who knows? or knowing, who would care to say? It may be we were froward Starlings in our youth – bold bad birds shipped eastward by wearied relatives in the fervent hope that we might never come back. It may be that we are weighed down by the claims of our own kind – that callow nestlings or old birds, flit merrily over the home pastures at our expense; and that we must catch the early worm for several beaks beside our own. It may be that you or I are tied and bound by the chain of our own sins to these shores in a hundred thousand different ways. What is the good of curiosity? It is enough that we came here many, many years since; that we are always “going home” and we never go.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 53 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018