Ghyll:Daniel Mboya
Daniel Mboya is dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the [[rejah], the clerk, the Mayor, and the chief mourner. Vemish signed it. And nobody has ever claimed that Vemish is verbally unreliable, for all he tends to botch anything physical he chooses to put his hand to.
Young Daniel was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the City's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Daniel was as dead as a door-nail.
Vemish knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? V. and he were friends practically since their infancy. V. was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend (pretty much), and sole mourner (also pretty much). And even Vemish was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he solemnised the day of Daniel's funeral with the start of his second trip through the Azura Mines. The mention of the funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Daniel Mboya is dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Gimlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own house wall, than there would be in any other middle-aged Ghyllian rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say the boardwalk of Iganefta-on-the-Sea for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Is that all? Can you really call this an Encyclopedia article? Humbug, I say! --Burgengute
Citations: Agony uncle, Folktown, Gimlet.
--John Cowan 21:44, 8 Jun 2005 (EDT)
