Joe Wilson and His Mates [108]
she should get about.
I wouldn't have lost her for twenty quid.'
`Never mind, Job,' said the doctor. `I, too, once shot an animal
I was fond of -- and for the sake of a woman -- but that animal
walked on two legs and wore trousers. Good-bye, Job.'
And he left for Poisonous Jimmy's.
The Little World Left Behind.
I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia
after many years. The railway had reached it, but otherwise
things were drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged.
There was the same old grant, comprising several thousands of acres
of the richest land in the district, lying idle still,
except for a few horses allowed to run there for a shilling a-head per week.
There were the same old selections -- about as far off as ever
from becoming freeholds -- shoved back among the barren ridges;
dusty little patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps,
and called farms, deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little
dried-up family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more. There was
the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps
in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and yards,
and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up the ground
and raise a crop. And along the creek the German farmers --
the only people there worthy of the name -- toiling (men, women, and children)
from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done;
the elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses
was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens
and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever -- it started
three generations ago over a stray bull. The O'Dunn was still fighting
for his great object in life, which was not to be `onneighborly',
as he put it. `I DON'T want to be onneighborly,' he said,
`but I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit. It's almost impossible
for a dacent man to live in sich a neighborhood and not be onneighborly,
thry how he will. But I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit, marruk my wurrud.'
Jones's red steer -- it couldn't have been the same red steer --
was continually breaking into Rooney's `whate an' bringin'
ivery head av the other cattle afther him, and ruinin' him intirely.'
The Rooneys and M`Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child,
over the impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney's brother-in-law,
by a distant relation of the M`Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week
in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion.
The string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
whirling into town, to `service', through clouds of dust and broiling heat,
on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old,
and hung up their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun,
and sat on their heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily
concerning crops, fruit, trees, and vines, and horses and cattle;
the drought and `smut' and `rust' in wheat, and the `ploorer'
(pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle, and other cheerful things; that there
colt or filly, or that there cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o' mine (or `Jim's').
They always talked most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name
was possible -- except by Germans and Chinamen. Towards evening
the old local relic of the golden days dropped in and announced
that he intended to `put down a shaft' next week, in a spot where
he'd been going to put it down twenty years ago -- and every week since.
It was nearly time that somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.
An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
with her `bit av prodjuce', as O'Dunn called it. She still drove
a long, bony, blind
I wouldn't have lost her for twenty quid.'
`Never mind, Job,' said the doctor. `I, too, once shot an animal
I was fond of -- and for the sake of a woman -- but that animal
walked on two legs and wore trousers. Good-bye, Job.'
And he left for Poisonous Jimmy's.
The Little World Left Behind.
I lately revisited a western agricultural district in Australia
after many years. The railway had reached it, but otherwise
things were drearily, hopelessly, depressingly unchanged.
There was the same old grant, comprising several thousands of acres
of the richest land in the district, lying idle still,
except for a few horses allowed to run there for a shilling a-head per week.
There were the same old selections -- about as far off as ever
from becoming freeholds -- shoved back among the barren ridges;
dusty little patches in the scrub, full of stones and stumps,
and called farms, deserted every few years, and tackled again by some little
dried-up family, or some old hatter, and then given best once more. There was
the cluster of farms on the flat, and in the foot of the gully, owned by
Australians of Irish or English descent, with the same number of stumps
in the wheat-paddock, the same broken fences and tumble-down huts and yards,
and the same weak, sleepy attempt made every season to scratch up the ground
and raise a crop. And along the creek the German farmers --
the only people there worthy of the name -- toiling (men, women, and children)
from daylight till dark, like slaves, just as they always had done;
the elder sons stoop-shouldered old men at thirty.
The row about the boundary fence between the Sweeneys and the Joneses
was unfinished still, and the old feud between the Dunderblitzens
and the Blitzendunders was more deadly than ever -- it started
three generations ago over a stray bull. The O'Dunn was still fighting
for his great object in life, which was not to be `onneighborly',
as he put it. `I DON'T want to be onneighborly,' he said,
`but I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit. It's almost impossible
for a dacent man to live in sich a neighborhood and not be onneighborly,
thry how he will. But I'll be aven wid some of 'em yit, marruk my wurrud.'
Jones's red steer -- it couldn't have been the same red steer --
was continually breaking into Rooney's `whate an' bringin'
ivery head av the other cattle afther him, and ruinin' him intirely.'
The Rooneys and M`Kenzies were at daggers drawn, even to the youngest child,
over the impounding of a horse belonging to Pat Rooney's brother-in-law,
by a distant relation of the M`Kenzies, which had happened nine years ago.
The same sun-burned, masculine women went past to market twice a-week
in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion.
The string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went
whirling into town, to `service', through clouds of dust and broiling heat,
on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon.
The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old,
and hung up their poor, ill-used little horses to bake in the sun,
and sat on their heels about the verandah, and drawled drearily
concerning crops, fruit, trees, and vines, and horses and cattle;
the drought and `smut' and `rust' in wheat, and the `ploorer'
(pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle, and other cheerful things; that there
colt or filly, or that there cattle-dog (pup or bitch) o' mine (or `Jim's').
They always talked most of farming there, where no farming worthy of the name
was possible -- except by Germans and Chinamen. Towards evening
the old local relic of the golden days dropped in and announced
that he intended to `put down a shaft' next week, in a spot where
he'd been going to put it down twenty years ago -- and every week since.
It was nearly time that somebody sunk a hole and buried him there.
An old local body named Mrs Witherly still went into town twice a-week
with her `bit av prodjuce', as O'Dunn called it. She still drove
a long, bony, blind