Part 1 (1/2)

Such is Life

by Tom Collins/Joseph Furphy

CHAPTER I

Uneency can never have befallen of itself

According to one theory of the Universe, thetoward this far-off, divine event ever since a scrap of fire-mist flew from the solar centre to form our planet

Not this event alone, of course; but every occurrence, past and present, from the fall of captured Troy to the fall of a captured insect

According to another theory, I hold an independent diploma as one of the architects of our Social Systement, and take my own risks, like any other unit of humanity

This theory, unlike the first, entails frequent hitches and cross-purposes; and to son operation of these I should owe my present holiday

Orthodoxly, we are reduced to one assumption: namely, that my indomitable old Adversary has suddenly called tothe easy enlistment of idle hands

Good If either of the two first hypotheses be correct, h tacitly conveys the responsibility of extending a ray of information, however narrow and feeble, across the path of such fellow-pilgrims as have led lives h al way for some weeks, as well as to purchase the few requisites of authorshi+p

If, on the other hand, ery has been cut off at the hted old Conspirator, it will be only fair to notify hi habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me to write; and he is hereby invited to view his own feather on the fatal dart

Whilst a peculiar defect--which I scarcely like to call an oversight in mental construction--shuts me out from the flowery pathway of the romancer, a co-ordinate requital endows , if less ornamental qualities of the chronicler This fairly equitable compensation embraces, I have been told, three distinct attributes: an intuition which reads n-boards; a limpid veracity; and a memory which habitually stereotypes all i to personal injuries

Sublanced at, and availing myself of the implied license to utilise that ho certain entries fro these to the minutest detail of occurrence or conversation

This will afford to the observant reader a fair picture of Life, as that engaging problem has presented itself to me

Twenty-two consecutive editions of Lett's Pocket Diary, with one week in each opening, lie on the table before me; all filled up, and in a decent state of preservation I think I shall undertake the annotation of a week's record A er in this attempt; but I shut my eyes, and take up one of the little voluain I shut inning with Sunday, the 9th of September

SUN SEPT 9 Thomp Coop &c 10-Mile Pines Cleo Duff Selec

The fore part of the day was altogether devoid of interest or event

Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied at rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks, and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; between sky and earth, a solitary wayfarer, wisely lapt in philosophic torpor

Ten yards behind the grey saddle-horse follows a black pack-horse, lightly loaded; and three yards behind the pack-horse a, furnished with the usual poison ht wire basket, worn after the ood walk, till the dark boundary of the scrub country disappears northward in the glassy haze, and in front, southward, the level black-soil plains of Riverina Proper ht sky-line, broken here and there by a e

And away beyond the horizon, southward still, the geodesic curve carries that monotony across the zone of salt-bush, ee, and on to the Victorian border--say, two hundred and fifty miles

Just aboutintersected and joined the stock route; and against the background of a pine-ridge, a mile ahead, I saw some wool-tea the trees One of the party was an intimate friend of mine, and three others were acquaintances; so, without any of the ceremony which prevails in more refined circles, I hooked Fancy's rein on a pine branch, pulled the pack-saddle off Bunyip, and sat doith the rest, to screen the tea through ent little operatives out of the cold mutton with the point of ether: Thohteen; and Price's two teaons, in accordance with a fashi+on of the day, bore nauard irons Thompson's was the Wanderer; Cooper's, the Hawkesbury; and Dixon's, the Woons, except Cooper's, which was the Sydney-side pattern

To avoid the vulgarity of ushering this company into the presence of the punctilious reader without even the ceremony of a Bedouin introduction--(This is , I will be responsible for it): a for in its suretyshi+p for prudent roup, severally, with such succinctness as may be compatible with my somewhat discursive style

Steve Thompson was a Victorian He was scarcely a typical bullock driver, since fifteen years of that occupation had not brutalised his teuined his vocabulary, nor frayed the ter”

from his participles I knew hiues in larceny ere, as poets feign, nearer to heaven than in maturer life And, wide as Riverina is, we often encountered fortuitously, and were always glad to fraternise Physically, Thoht to be