Part 8 (2/2)

Thoed the to taste Dixon and Methuselah retired to haons bum simply lay where he was

I would do my companions what honour I can, but the stern code of the chronicler per with the fact that Mosey and buhby occasionally taking part, rather, I think, through courtesy than sy the service with a fescennine anecdote, beginning, 'It is related that, on one occasion, the late Marquis of Waterford'----

Willoughby had selected a smooth place nearhis exceptionally dirty blanket, and another five in tidily folding his ragged coat for a pillow

Then he re from his feet the inexpensive substitute for socks known as 'prince-alberts,'

he artistically spread the redolent swaths across his boots to receive the needed benefit of the night air; perforance aance which not another hby could have acquired the practical effectiveness of a good rough average vulgarian

Poor shadow of departed exclusiveness!--lying there, with none so poor to do him reverence! He was a type--and, by reason of his happy teentle for himself under normal conditions of back-country life Urbane address, faultless syntax, even that good part which shall not be taken away, namely, the calm consciousness of inherent superiority, are of little use here

And yet your Australian novelist finds no inconsistency in placing the bookish student, or the city dandy, er, or the pioneer, in vocations which have been the life-work of the latter O, the wearisome nonsense of this kind which is remorselessly thrust upon a docile public! And what an opportunity for soinality, toa serown, and launched into polished society, there to excel the fastidious idlers of drawing-room and tennis-court in their own line! This miracle would be more reasonable than its antithesis Without doubt, it is easier to acquire gentlemanly deportment than axe-man's muscle; easier to criticise an opera than to identify a beast seen casually twelve ly than toof a theodolite, across strange country in foggy weather; easier to recognise the various costly vintages than to live contentedly on the s When you take this back elevation of the question, the inconsistency becoa of Art, viewed in conjunction with the brevis of Life, makes it at least reasonable that when a man has faithfully served one exclusive apprenticeshi+p, he will find it too late in the day to serve a second Moreover, there are few advantages in training which do not, according to present social arrangenorance is, after all, more variable in character than in extent

Each sphere of life, each occupation, is burdened with its own special brand of this unhappy heritage To renorance is a life-work for any norance,'

hat betrayed the great lexicographer into defining 'pastern'

as 'a horse's knee' And the Doctor was right (in his adnorance, reader, pure ignorance is what debars you froibly in several dialects of the Chinese language Yet a friend of h the same person knows as little of book-lore as William Shakespear of Stratford knew

But if you had been brought up in a Chinese caold-field, your own special acquirerooves similar to Yabby's Let each of us keep himself behind the spikes on this question of restricted capability

And should soh his own ancestors have borne coat-arh he hiht up so utterly and aristocratically useless as to have been unable, at twenty years of age, to polish his own boots, yet he is now, -- I can only reply, in the words of Portia, that I fear ain, would be clai Reentleman' of actual life

He is an unknown and elusive quantity, e or fool, rees of definiteness Our subject is that insult to common sense, that childish slap in the face of honest entleman' of fiction, and of Australian fiction pre-eminently

Heaven knows I am no more inclined to decry social culture than e no aristocracy except one of service and self-sacrifice, in which he that is chief shall be servant, and he that is greatest of all, servant of all And it is surely tiadocio of caste which uid Captain Vemon de Vere (or words to that effect) an overes, any one of ould take his lordshi+p by the ankles, and wipe the battlefield with his patrician visage; whichMick, the hod-man, who, in unpleasant reality, would feel the kick of a horse less than his antagonist would the wind of heaven, visiting his face too roughly; which lish rectory show the saddle-hardened specialists of the back country how to ride a buckjumper; which makes a party of resourceful bushmen stand helpless in the presence of flood or fire, till marshalled by some hero of the croquet lawn; above all, which entleinable reason except that the latter says 'deuced'

instead of 'sanguinary,' and 'by Jove' instead of 'by sheol'

Go to; I'll no more on't; it hath made e which, by a shi+fting value of the ter a man of honour, probity, education, and taste; for, by ie, by current application, and by every rule which gives definiteto words, the man with a shovel in his hand, a rule in his pocket, an axe on his shoulder, a leather apron on his abdoe of race, as infinite as entleambler, a debauchee, a parasite, a helpless potterer; he may be a man of spotless life, able and honest; but he st workentle; but he is necessarily genteel Etyentility alone, is the qualification of the 'gentleentleentleht than such a person trying to cooldfields, or with a hardy, nine-lifed bushman in the back country? In the back country, a penniless and friendless 'gentleman,' if sober and honest and possessed of some little ability, may aspire to the position of a station storekeeper

If destitute of these advantages--and reduced 'gentlemen' are not by anyhe can do, if he gets the chance, is to settle down thankfully into the innocent occupation so earnestly desired by Henry the Sixth of the play, and so thriftily pursued by the alleged father of any amateur elocutionist whose naentlemen' it is often said that their education becoe

This is one of those taking expressions which are repeated fropie till they seenorance--their technical ignorance--that is their curse

Education of any kind never was, and never can be, a curse to its possessor; it is a curse only to the person whose interest lies in exploiting its possessor Erudition, even in the hu refuge, of the restlesswell enough toby it, his education is simply outclassed, overborne, and crushed by his own superior ignorance

To be sure, there are allantly and conspicuously maintain an all-round superiority in the society to which I , naels' visits--in the obvious, as well as in the conventional but remoter sense I can count no less than threemy ten thousand acquaintances When the twofold excellence of such ambidexters is not stultified by selfishness, you have in theht pronounce the judgood Move heaven and earth, then, tois, at least, theoretically possible; for it is in no way necessary that the manual worker should be rude and illiterate; shut out froes Nor is it any more necessary that the social aristocrat-- ostentatiously useless, as he generally is--should hold virtual ancies of life

But the coentlee, and by mere virtue of caste-consciousness, and caste-eminence, and caste-exclusiveness, doth bestride this narroorld like a colossus----

”I am sorry to break in upon your ly, turning towards es I find myself without the requisite for my normal bedtime solace; and I am unusually wakeful

Could you spare me a pipeful of tobacco?”

”Certainly! Why did n't you mention it before? I had no idea you were a smoker I feel really vexed at your reticence”