Part 47 (2/2)

Now, the only reserve-force adherent to station aristocracy resides in the er's power to ”sack”

The squatter of half-a-century ago dorant servants by entlerovellers on the other He dominated his convict servants by physical force--an equally easy task But now the old squatter has gone to the rant and old hand to the kitchen below; and between the self-valuation of the latter-day squatter and that of his contee-slave, there is very little to choose Hence the toe of the blucher treads on the heel of the tan boot, and galls its stitches

The average share of that knowledge which is power is undoubtedly in favour of the tan boot; but the preponderant moiety is just as surely held by the blucher In our de sensitiveness to affront, is dangerously high, and becoher On the other hand, the squatter, even if pliant by disposition, cannot spring to the strain; social usage being territorial rather than personal; so here, you see, we have the two factors which should blend together in harmony--naenius of the ' breach

There are two re one of these, soive ith a crash Either the anachronistic tradition must make suicidal concessions, or the better-class people must drown all plebeian Australian males in infancy, and fill the vacancy with Asiatics

My acquaintance with Runny three stray steers, I had reached the station at sunset I had come more than sixty miles--nearly all unstocked country--in two days, and with only one chance ed by reason of the scrub, and dirty for lack of water: whilst an ill-spelled and ungrammatical order on Naylor of Koolybooka, for 28, was the nearest approach to money in my possession I had leftthe hooo to the store and get your rations,'

said he disgustedly 'And, see--if those steers of yours are on the run, get them off as quick as possible Fence-breakers, no doubt Come! hurry-up, or the store will be closed!' The storekeeper measured me out a pannikin of dust into a newspaper, and directed me to the left-hand corner of the ram-paddock, as the best place for my horse There, in the spacious Court of the Gentiles, I made a fire, worked up my johnny-cake on the flat top of the corner post, ate it hot off the coals, then lay down in swino-philosophic contentment, and read the newspaper till I could s, and so to sleep

My next visit to Runnymede took place about three years later I had timed myself to draw-up to the station on a Saturday afternoon, with five-ton-seventeen of wire Montgoot the duplicate We won't disturb your load till Monday

Shove your trespassers in the ration-paddock, and go and stop in the hut'

I was rising in the world

Next tiister which Montgo noorthy of the Inner Court, I was told-off to sleep in the spare bed in Moriarty's rooies, where aited on by a menial If my social evolution had continued--if I had expanded, for instance, into a literary tourist, of sound Conservative principles-- I would have seen the inside of the boss's house before I had done But, as it happened, I withered and contracted from that point--simultaneously, norance and correlative uselessness Such, however, is life

But on the present occasion I had been quartered in the barracks for four whole days, as idle as a freshly-painted shi+p upon an oceanof the pigment used

(A cluy was inexcusable

I had three note-books filled with valuable memoranda for a Series of Shakespearean Studies; and O, how I longed for a few days'

untroubled leisure, just to break ground on the work Those notes had been written in noisy huts, or by flickering firelight, or on horseback--written in eager activity of mind, and in hope of such an opportunity for a slip But I have one besetting sin; and this Delilah, scissors in hand, had dogged me to Runnymede, and polled ravitated into the old familiar vice; but I left the consequences for an after-consideration The opportunity was there, like an uncorked bottle under a dipso to myself; 'one more, and that's the last; so sas ne'er so fatal'

According to the unhappy custo ca of the 9th I slipped intothe horse-paddock fence toward a natural hollow, a mile from the station Here twelve or fifteen years' continuous traoat) on ground theretofore untrodden except by blackfellows, birds, and marsupials, had developed a pond, soht feet deep in the middle, and sometimes dry Full or dry, fresh or rotten, the pond was known as the 'swi-hole' At the tione, in both senses, and evaporating at the rate of an inch a day

With a good supple stem of old-in, waiting for frogs; then I noticedthrough the lukeater, recklessly and wickedly discounting the prospective virility of another day; and there I reo to breakfast

Nothing but that integrity which springs fro ulti confession--a confession which I cannot but regard as da, from the literary, as well as fro the last twenty or thirty years, the foree has, from time to time, casually touched on the re; but however lightly and racily this subject raded into repulsiveness by the clus look best when round, and recent literature certainly proves this to be one of the dainty or picturesque in the present himself; yet ho of our later novels or notes of travel are without that bit of description; generally set-off by an ungainly reflection on the dirt of some other person, class, or community The noxious affectation is everywhere Even the Salvation officer cannot norite his contribution to the War Cry without a detailed account of the bath he took on this or that occasion--a thing which has no interest whatever for anyone but hi to wash our dirty skins, as well as our dirty calico, in private

We eously copy wos, must accumulate dirt, as we do; and she must now and then wash that dirt off, or it would be there still (Like St Paul, I speak as a man) But the scribess never parades her ablutions on the printed page If, for instance, you could prevail upon the whole galaxy of Australian authoresses and pen-woricultural Show, in their literary capacity, you would see proof of this Each would write her catalogue of aristocratic visitors, her unfavourable impressions re quality of refreshments, her sarcastic notice of other womentary observations on the floral exhibits; but not one would wind-up her ave herself in the seclusion of her lodgings when the tururatively a poe, hot afternoon without increasing in weight by exogenous accretion; but her soulfulness, however powerless to disallow dirt, silently asserts itself when that dirt comes to be shi+fted

However, urative sense, as well as in the literal--and the sad consciousness of fellowshi+p with men who 'tub' themselves on paper is added to the humiliation of the disclosure itself In a word, just as I lost -hole, I lose my individuality in the confession But I don't lose ood

In Physical Science, or in Pure Ethics--whoop! I am Antony yet!

Nature, by a kind of Monroe Doctrine, has allotted the dry land to man, and various other animals; the water to fish, leeches, etc; the air to birds, bats, flies, etc; the fire to salamanders, imps, unbaptised babies, etc; and she strictly penalises the trespass of each class on the domain of any other Naturally then, about sixteen raids, within four days, on an alien eleour out of my system, and quenched every spark of heroism

Consider the child He is the creature of instinct; and instinct--according to h reason often does so, as we know to our cost Now, the picaninny knohat is good for him

Place him in promixity to a dust-hole or an ash-heap, and observe what takes place He approaches it with that droll, yet pathetic, method of loco on both hands and one knee, whilst with the big toe of the other hind-foot he propels hi In the very centre of the dirt, he deftly whirls into a sitting position, and proceeds to redee, meanwhile, that silence which is the perfectest herald of joy Ormuzd the Good has inspired him with this inclinationBut the Minister of Ahriman the Evil is not far off The able-bodied mother seizes the th to the kitchen It is to no purpose that he beco up his voice in cla of shot

That uided woman denudes him, washes him, rubs soap into his eyes, spanks hi him a teaspoon to play with Then she resue's projecting ear, and that heaven-directed biain illustrating the first clause of the Sphynx's not very complicated riddle, keeps the strictly noiseless tenor of his way, till Ahriman's priestess looks round to see the ain to his ashheap, and the papoose that ashed ing in the dust-hole And so the pull-devil-pull-baker strife goes on to the last syllable of recorded tiine, but between the two great principles of Good and Evil, so widely allegorised and personified, yet so uncertainly grasped, and so loosely defined The result is sad enough: physically, not one in ten of us is what the doctor ordered, and, of course, brought; mentally, we are mostly fools; ht to be And such is life

At breakfast, I re between Mrs Beaudesart, the housekeeper, and Ida, the white trash whose vocation was to wait on the narangies