Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum, tum, tum-tum,
To shear the Golden Fleece.


Ten years earlier he had lifted the chant, sung to the air of the
"Doxology," when afflicted with the fever to go gold-mining in
Patagonia. The multitudinous family had sat upon him, but had had
a hard time doing it. When all else had failed to shake his
resolution, they had applied lawyers to him, with the threat of
getting out guardianship papers and of confining him in the state
asylum for the insane--which was reasonable for a man who had, a
quarter of a century before, speculated away all but ten meagre
acres of a California principality, and who had displayed no better
business acumen ever since.

The application of lawyers to John Tarwater was like the
application of a mustard plaster. For, in his judgment, they were
the gentry, more than any other, who had skinned him out of the
broad Tarwater acres. So, at the time of his Patagonian fever, the
very thought of so drastic a remedy was sufficient to cure him. He
quickly demonstrated he was not crazy by shaking the fever from him
and agreeing not to go to Patagonia.

Next, he demonstrated how crazy he really was, by deeding over to
his family, unsolicited, the ten acres on Tarwater Flat, the house,
barn, outbuildings, and water-rights. Also did he turn over the
eight hundred dollars in bank that was the long-saved salvage of
his wrecked fortune. But for this the family found no cause for
committal to the asylum, since such committal would necessarily
invalidate what he had done.