"Sense and Sinsemilla," by Jane "Turbochamber" Austen

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                                                CHAPTER ONE

         The family of Dashwood had long been settled down in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner, and grown such immaculate sinsemilla bud, as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age due to his imbibing of the enchanted weed, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Fog-hat’ Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate and its verdant crop, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath its potent bounty. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent in a befuddled haze. His attachment to them all increased, as did his daily desire for creampuffs of French provenance that he would at times embark upon strenuous journeys the length and breadth of the counties to procure. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. ‘Fog-hat’ to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children, assisted by great quantities of the exquisite pastries and the kind-bud grown on their estate, added a relish to his existence.

         By a former marriage, ‘Fog-hat’ Dashwood had one son: by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soonafterwards, he added to his wealth. To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate with its astonishing harvest was not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of what might arise to them from their father's inheriting that property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal, all from robust commerce in the heady crop; for the remaining moiety of his first wife's fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only a life-interest in it.

         The old gentleman died, his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;—but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. ‘Fog-hat’ had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son;—but to his son, and his son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its estimable plants. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his befogged uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, amplified by the sinsemilla biscuits of which the family partook, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind, however, and, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds a-piece and his legendary reserve of hemp seeds, gathered on a trip to the island of O-hawaii, rare kernels of great potency forged in the volcanic loam of that place.

         ‘Fog-hat’ Dashwood’s disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper was cheerful and sanguine, blood-shot though his eyes ever remained; and he might reasonably hope to live many years, and by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the green leafy produce of an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate improvement. But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was his only one twelvemonth. He survived his uncle no longer, and expired, a water-pipe of Persian fashion in hand, testing the latest of the preternatural Norland yield; and ten thousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that remained for his widow and daughters.

         His son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, and to him ‘Fog-hat’ Dashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness could command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters.

         Mr. John ‘the Freak-o-Naut’ Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make them ‘chilled in phat-city,’ as the Dashwoods styled it. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance, and ‘Freak’ Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might prudently be in his power to do for them.

         He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but ‘el Freakino was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties, despite occasional episodic deliria induced by his astonishing ingestions of Norland-weed. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:—he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young and ‘sky-high’ when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. ‘Freak-o-Naut’ Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself;—more narrow-minded and prone to similar psychickal hysterias.

         When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of generosity.— "Yes, he would give them sweet bankage: it would be phat and righteous! It would be enough to make them completely easy-street. Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum by unloading a hundredweight of plant-tops with little hassle."— He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did not repent.

         No sooner was his father's funeral over, and the family set down to an  afternoon smoak in his honor, than Mrs. ‘Freak’o’Zoid,’ without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law, arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her right to come, and come ‘galactick,’ as was the Dashwood fashion; the house was her husband's from the moment of his father's decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct in ‘crashing their digs’ was so much the greater, and to a woman in Mrs. ‘Freak’o’Nautica’s situation, with only common feelings, must have been highly unpleasing;—but in her befuddled mind there was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of immovable disgust. Mrs. Johnny Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband's family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of shewing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it.

         So acutely did Mrs. ‘Freaky-Deaky’ feel this ungracious behavior of her ‘bum-rushing the Norland show’, and so earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the propriety of ‘pounding the track’, and her own tender love for all her three children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach with their sometime psychotic brother.

         Elinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, especially while ‘baked,’ which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had excellent lungs;—her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn; and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.

         Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor's. She was sensible and clever, but much given to bouts of violent tuba-playing while intoxicated; eager in everything: her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent, and everything but musical in those ‘tubular’ ramblings. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great, especially in the manner in which the uncured Norland-weed wrung a bellows-wracking volley of coughs from them both during their mutual smoking sessions, and the impromptu compositions on tuba and piano-forte they performed together, on which many hours would be spent between an impoverished aural palette of a mere two chords.

         Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister's tuba-playing; but by Mrs. Dashwood it was valued and cherished. The agony of grief which overpowered them at the first sound of it, was voluntarily renewed, was sought for, was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that its mournful blasts could afford, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future. Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted with her sister’s plaintive honks; but still she could struggle, she could amuse herself in her own endless hours with the contraption of ingenious design to make multiform soap-bubbles which ‘Freak o’ Naut’ had constructed. She could consult with her brother, especially in his mad babbling states of excitation and his unwilled acts of disrobing, could receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with the judicious attractions three full bowls of Norland-weed could render; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar exertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance.

         Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl, but not much a connoisseur of the estate’s leafy yield; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having much of her ‘Aquarian’ sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.