Part 38 (1/2)

Then the chestnuts tossed their heads, and the buggy resu across the crab-holes like a canoe on rough water My soul went forth in a paean of joy, for, exactly as the perfect circle of a flying scrawl bespoke Giotto, this action bespoke Stewart of Kooltopa, now e horses Here was uratively, I would put Alf in a basket, with a note pinned to his bib, and leave hie of the pastoral regions is drawn from a course of novels of the Geoffrey Hamlyn class, cannot fail to hold a most erroneous notion of the squatter Of course, we use the tering partner, or a salaried enerations of development, there is no typical squatter

Or, if you like, there are a thousand types Hungry M'Intyre is one type; Senteel, and parsiohty and iht, just as likely as not, have compellednine-hundred and ninety-five types-any type conceivable, in fact, except the slender-witted, virgin-souled, overgrown schoolboys who fill Henry Kingsley's exceedingly trashy andnovel with their insufferable twaddle

There was a squatter of the Sam Buckley type, but he, in the strictest sense of the word, went to beggary; and, being too plump of body and exalted of soul for barroork, and too co else, he was shi+fted by the angels to a better world--a world where the Christian gentlear fisher-up

Stewart, it enerous handicap, as the younger son of a wealthy and aristocratic Scottish laird, he had, during a Colonial race of forty years, daily committed himself by actions which shut hiall of altruism, and in the bond of denanirity, could never carry off the unpardonable sin in which this lost sheep-oed--the taint, namely, of isocratic principle When a , in its naked reality, he thereby forfeits the title of 'gentle as a deentleman; the adjective and noun are hyphenated by a draord If the said unclean thing eats into its victim to the sah-horse, thewhat the Orientals call a dog of a Christian For there is no such thing as a Christian gentleuished froentleentleentle the shi+fty, insidious title in its go-to-entleentleman'

can be a Christian; for Christianity postulates initial equality, and recognises no gradation except in usefulness

So Steas never, even by inadvertence, spoken of as a gentleman--always as a Christian Three-score years of wise choice in the perpetually-recurring alternatives of life, had h according to the shapen-in-iniquity theory, he ree of squatter, had proved sharp enough to detect the he did 'Stewart! Oh, he's a (adj) Christian!' That was all

He had reached a certain standard, and was expected to live up to it

Such is life

By a notable coincidence, Steas rich Not owing to his Christianity, bear inby the look of a sheep, as it raced past, whether the anis; partly to his being able to tell, by as happening in so tothat paid; partly to his knohen he ell off, and leaving the reflectedin the water; partly to a stubborn crotchet which iver of usury, as well as the taker, to be beyond the pale of mercy; partly to a fine administrative ability; partly to the avoidance of expensive habits--partly to all these combined, but chiefly to the fact that his mana never failed

Anyway, he could afford to i people, ance put together, and be better off all the while

An illustration may not be amiss here I'll tell you what I saw in the Mia the autumn and winter of '83--that is, from six to nine months before the date of this discursive, yet faithful, record

'83 was a bad year The scanty growth of the '82 spring had been eaten off nearly as fast as it grew, and afterward the millions of stock had to live--like the Melbourne unelorious sunshi+ne Then when the winter ca but frost; and the last state of the country orse than the first The mile-wide stockroute fro sheep along the whole two hundred and fifty miles On one part of the route, some frivolous person had stooked the driedso thick) in order that drovers and boundaryon ahead to run the little mobs out of the way

And as hues to others participation in the sell, the stooks improved in size and life-likeness for weeks andthe fifty-mile stretch of that route which bisects the One Tree Plain, that, taking no account of sheep, I never was out of sight of dying cattle and horses--let alone the dead ones The famine was sore in the land To use the expression ofa flea fro Or, to put it in another way: the life of stock in Riverina was as cheap as the life of the coard, Rudyard Kipling, and so the best of land, and lightly stocked, was an exception; and thither flocked nearly all the uncircumcised of Riverina, with their homeless bullocks and horses Steas n't thewould have been of any use; and in affairs of this nature, the squatter who hesitates is lost The ti off; in extreme cases, such as the one under review, they are about equal in tenacity to the Scythians or the Cimbri of olden times

There was no end to the-in from seven-syllabled localities on all points of the coraduated sets of supple-jointed keen-sighted children--the latter, I grieve to ad theory which assuinal type

There was plenty of rough feed in the Mia-ated to hold their protracted Feast of Tabernacles, their vast caious lines

For the easy profanity, unconscious obscenity, and august slang of the back country scented the air like ate repertory of bona fide anecdote and re fellow in that great rendezvous dared to eree, on pain of being posted as a double-adjective blatherskite; for his audience was sure to include a couple of critical, cynical, iron-grey cyclopedias of everything Australian--everything, at least, untainted by the spurious and blue-elist, collecting inal enerate brethren a word of exhortation This good arded as his own; and, rest his soul! he needs no ratitude and sorrow in his eyes, that he got a fine collection in the Mia-mia, but no souls; and both clauses of his state of truth

Stewart sullenly avoided this gathering of the clans He kneas n't wanted there; and, as the paddock consisted chiefly of purchased land, he felt that the conventionalities were, in a sense, violated But what could the people do? It was a ether

At last, moved by the report of the Mia-e, and saw five ies, tents, wo-utensils, andharness , reading Ouida, yarning round fires, or trying to invent so; but he only saw their backs, and they did n't see him at all He took a tour round the paddock, and found a racecourse duly laid out in a suitable place, with a few fellows training their bits of stuff for a co in the swamps, and others after turkeys on the plains, whilst a few diverted the rabbits on the sand-hills And as for bullocks and horses--why, they were as grasshoppers for ht his own sheep Wild and shy, as paddocked merinos always are, these had withdrawn to the quietest places they could find, and were therethe best of a bad job Stewart lost his te the readers of this simple memoir is hereby authorised to cast the first stone

He allowed the sun to go down upon his wrath Next , he rallied up all his station hands; mustered the Mia-mia Paddock; distributed the sheep elsewhere over the run; and thus washed his hands of all responsibility touching the welfare of his guests

Toward spring, he drove round the caive the trespassers a bit of his et you to shi+ft Lots of perishi+ng teaet down out of the back country till now, and all rass for them when they coradually broke-up, and things returned to their norether so Some of the no leisurely over the station paddocks, with the county ible allotments were, and presently picked the eyes out of the run; in soht from their camps to their selections Such is life

Saint Peter, I should iine, had narroatched the squatter's attitude when the assyrian ca from perdition Afterward, he had noted with approval that the new selectors were treated with the same forbearance and benevolence they had forees

But not until he saart pounce on the incident of the ainst land- his keys on his thue reserved in case of rich men And still the metaphor of the camel and the needle's eye stands unimpaired The difficulties vanish only when you attain sodoates or jasper seas; how accordant with the Orn; how indouarded by the di, Collins”

”Good , Mr Stewart An early stirrer, by the rood”

”Yes; I have a (sheol) of a long stage before ht?”