Unsuccessful 
 Competitors 
 
 OTHER STORIES. 
 BY "GOSSIP." 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE SYDNEY STOCK & STATION 
 JOURNAL." 
 
 WM, BROOKS &. CO., PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS, 
 22 BRIDGE STREET, SYDNEY, AND 
 EAGLE STREET, BRISBANE. 
 
 3B- 
 
 1897. 
 
 1732763
 
 GOSSIP.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 V'HESE stories have been selected from 
 the pages of the SYDNEY STOCK AND 
 STATION JOURNAL by the votes of our 
 friendly readers. They have each 
 taught something or borne some com- 
 fort to the voters, so, trusting to this selection, we 
 send out this little volume to a larger audience, that 
 may, perchance, not be so kindly in its judgment. 
 But, whatever the verdict may be, the volume will 
 be welcomed by many in the bush, and for their 
 sakes the writer is content.
 
 CO/NTE/NTS. 
 
 Unsuccessful Competitors ... ... ... .. ... 1 
 
 The Origin of Tea 5 
 
 A Cheese Mite . .. 15 
 
 The "Fat Man" 22 
 
 How to Learn to Think 26 
 
 The Salt of the Earth 30 
 
 Breeding Human Beings ... ... .. .. . 44 
 
 The Slave of the Pipe 48 
 
 Grandfather's Clo<* 52 
 
 Kosher Meat .. 56 
 
 The Consumption Horror .. 61 
 
 Fortune Telling .. 66 
 
 Money-Lenders' Tricks .. .. ... .. ... 83 
 
 Man-made Calendars .. .. 88 
 
 Hydatid Cysts 93 
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences .. ... .. .. ... 98 
 
 The Human Eye .. 117 
 
 Our British Ships 129 
 
 A Trip te Tasmania 133 
 
 The Secret of England's Littleness .. . ... 152
 
 Uqsueeessful Cerqpetiters. 
 
 was at the social gathering, after a country 
 show, that the chairman said, " Mr. Wildwind 
 will now propose the toast of the unsuccessful 
 competitors." Then Mr. Wildwind arose and 
 made a speech about the men who had lost the day, 
 in the crude, common-place of his class. Yet he felt 
 in his soul that there was something true and 
 high and holy to be said on the subject, only he 
 couldn't say it. His hearers realised that, too, and 
 at every opportunity they cheered for the " unsuccess- 
 ful competitors," but in spite of that, it was a tame 
 affair. These men who make speeches at country 
 shows trust too often to "inspiration." But that is 
 a delusion and a snare. If a man is going to speak 
 well, he must speak wisely, and must do his level 
 best by careful preparation. He must ask himself 
 how his speech would look in print, by the cold 
 light of day, when the glamor of the hour has 
 vanished and the applause of his friends has been 
 forgotten. You can't make a good, wise speech on 
 inspiration. Every good thing on God's earth has to 
 be bought some with money, some with sorrow, and 
 some with weary years. Gordon says 
 
 "For what's worth having must aye be bought, 
 For sport's like life, and life's like sport ; 
 ' It ain't all skittles and beer.' " 
 
 No, my word it ain't ! 
 
 The " unsuccessful competitors " in life are the 
 ones who command my deepest admiration. The 
 men who win are the ones to laugh, and it's easy to 
 be pleasant when you've won ; but the man who fails 
 is often the hero. The men who have failed have 
 been life's victors ; the men who fail are the men
 
 2 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 whose names make the sweetest music on the tongues 
 of their fellows ; the men who fail are the men who 
 make the world's success ! If you think that the 
 winners in life's race are the men who deserve the 
 greatest credit, then it shows that you haven't 
 looked beneath the surface at all. But there's a 
 sterling honesty in the hearts of human beings that 
 stirs me when I think of it. When a man does a 
 smart thing and succeeds, there's a multitude to do 
 him honour ; but the great heart of the mass is 
 untouched ; they sneer at him, they mistrust him. 
 Deep down in our hearts we love the unsuccessful 
 ones, the honest ones, the sterling ones. It's good to 
 be a success, but it's better to be true and have a 
 heart at peace. Do you remember that old poem ? 
 
 " They say that the world, this great big world, 
 
 Will never a moment stop 
 To see which dog may be in the right, 
 
 But will shout for the dog that's on top " 
 
 Well, that's not true ! Our world, the pastoral 
 world of Australia, prefers the dog that's in the 
 right. 
 
 If you sit down to judge by every-day appearances, 
 the greatest failure of history was Jesus Christ ! He 
 lived a brief life on earth, preaching a pure and holy 
 doctrine that is far above us now, let alone above the 
 miserable sinners who put on airs in Palestine two 
 thousand years ago. See how his life ended. Some 
 of his followers thought he was the promised Messiah, 
 some hailed him as " King of the Jews," but see how 
 it all ended ! The life of the Nazarene went out on 
 the Cross in the awful darkness of Calvary, while he 
 cried - " My, God, my Grod, why hast thou forsaken 
 me ? " What a death ! Yet what name on earth is 
 more potent to conjure with to-day 1 Christ was, 
 according to human standards, one of the most 
 " unsuccessful competitors " that ever ran in the race 
 of life, but who dares say that now, a couple of 
 thousand years later 1 Bah ! pharisaism may triumph 
 for the hour, and the winner may crow, but the
 
 Unsuccessful Competitors. 3 
 
 " unsuccessful competitors " may turn out to be the 
 best men after all. You can never tell till the 
 numbers go up, and old Dauue Nature is in no hurry 
 to hoist the numbers. 
 
 Then look at that sturdy little tentmaker of 
 Tarsus, whose name was Paul. He was a pig-headed, 
 masterful man, who, from my point of view, held lots 
 of erroneous opinions But his heart was true. He 
 said : " God hath made of one blood all nations of 
 men, for to dwell together on all the face of the 
 earth." He was the man, probably, to whom we 
 owe that Xlllth chapter of Corinthians about 
 charity. He was a big man, judged by the standards 
 of to-day, but look at him from his own time he 
 was an " unsuccessful competitor." He was a man 
 who worked for his tucker while he preached, and 
 that kind of man commands my respect. He got 
 beaten and starved ; was shipwrecked and despised, 
 and ended up his career in a Roman prison, He was 
 such a poor man, such a despised man, that nobody 
 noted the manner of his death, but he stands head 
 and shoulders over the world's great men to-day. In 
 his life he was an " unsuccessful competitor," in his 
 death he was a failure, but look over the pages of 
 history and you will see that he was no failure. He 
 was a strong, true man, and the ages have done him 
 justice. 
 
 Look at Socrates in his cell, drinking the deadly 
 hemlock draught that gave him freedom from a world 
 of envy, malice and uncharitableness. Socrates was 
 an " unsuccessful competitor," judged by the light 
 that shone in his prison house on the day of his 
 death ; but what says the world to-day ? The 
 Socratic methods were wise ones. The man who 
 drank the hemlock at the command of his foes was a 
 hero, whose name will live forever. The men whose 
 names are most revered on earth to-day are the men 
 who were "unsuccessful competitors" in the race of 
 life. Sir William Wallace, the idol of every Scottish 
 boy, failed in his life's work, and was executed on
 
 4 Australian Gossip and Story, 
 
 Tower Hill, London. He, too, was an " unsuccessful 
 competitor " ; but the world is better for his life, 
 better for his death, and it may be, better 
 for his failure. General Gordon, too, perishing 
 miserably in that Arab town, waiting for the relief 
 that never came, was an " unsuccessful competitor," 
 but his name shines amid the constellation of the 
 glorious ones who have made our land the foremost 
 on the earth. It is the " unsuccessful competitors " 
 who have glorified this dull old earth, and have made 
 it a good world to live in. 
 
 What has made our race the dominant race on 
 earth 1 It is the magnificent capacity our people 
 possess to be " unsuccessful competitors." They can 
 fight and get licked and fight again, and they never 
 know whether they've been licked or not. Some 
 nations, like the French, can work wonders in an 
 enthusiastic rush ; but our nation plods along and 
 gets defeated and plods along some more You can 
 see men on stations holding on, year after year, in 
 spite of floods, and droughts, and fires, and anthrax, 
 and noxious weeds, and vermin, and banks, and 
 overdrafts, and false friends, until they triumph or 
 die. It is because our race is gritty, and plucky, 
 and tenacious, that it is what it is to-day, and Queen 
 Victoria reigns over the mightiest nation on earth, 
 because her people know how to be " unsuccessful com- 
 petitors."
 
 The Origin of Tea. 5 1 ' 
 
 "["he 6rif in ef 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 'NCE upon & time, a very long time ago, in the 
 reign of Yuen Ty, in the dynasty of Tsin, 
 there came a strange, sweet-faced little 
 woman into the market place of a famous 
 Chinese town. She carried in her hand a little cup 
 tilled with a strange, yellow-tinted liquor. All day 
 long she sold this new drink which was not wine 
 to the people, and she gave the money she got for it 
 to the poor and the needy. The curious part of it 
 was that the cup never ran dry, nor ever needed 
 replenishment. It was a marvellous liquor too, for, 
 though it did not intoxicate, it revived and cheered 
 and strengthened all who drank it. The little old 
 woman would tell nothing. She simply sold the 
 liquor, and there was something in it that appealed 
 to everybody's taste. Nobody could tell what that 
 " something " was, but it seemed to meet a craving 
 in life. As the market day drew to a close, the 
 people got terribly excited over the mystery of the 
 cup, and as Chinese are like the rest of us even 
 though they have to pay a poll tax of ,100 they 
 did a very stupid thing. They resolved on seizing 
 the old dame and compelling her to reveal the secret 
 of her cup and her strange liquor. They did so, and 
 put her in jail. When the sun was setting, the old 
 lady rose lightly up in her cell and floated out be- 
 tween the bars of the window, cup and all, and she 
 has never been seen on earth from that day to this, 
 and thousands of moons have waxed and waned 
 since that far off day. 
 
 The Chinese missed their chance that time 
 through their own foolishness, and so they
 
 6 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 didn't find out what tea was for a very long time. 
 It was tea the old lady was selling, and if she had 
 been well treated she would, no doubt, have revealed 
 the secret to the favoured race, but they were too 
 human and foolish. The way tea came to China at 
 last was very curious. There had been a great re- 
 vival of religion in India for the Holy Bhudda had 
 wandered to and fro in the land, having no place to 
 lay his head, proc'aiming the new world's gospel 
 
 " Whereby, whoso will live mighty or mean, 
 Wise or unlearned, man, woman, young or old 
 Shall, soon or late, break from the wheels of life, 
 Attaining bleat existence. 
 
 The disciples of the new faith went out into all 
 the world, proclaiming the gospel taught by Bhudda, 
 and one of them named Dharma went to China. He 
 had been a great sinner in his time, but now, being 
 converted, he was full of holy zeal, and the early days 
 of all new religions are the days of miracles, so a 
 miraculous thing happened to Dharma. He had 
 vowed that he would sleep nevermore, but wander, 
 sleeplessly, all over the earth, proclaiming the great 
 gospel of the universal brotherhood of man. But the 
 flesh is weak, and on a Chinese hill poor Dharma fell 
 asleep. When he awoke he was full of bitterness and 
 woe for breaking his \ow. He cried against him- 
 self, and he tore out his eyelashes, and cast them on 
 the ground. He swore afresh to sleep no more, and 
 he went out into the world once again with re- 
 newed and sleepless vigour. 
 
 And it came to pass after many years that 
 Dharma returned unto the hillside where he had slept, 
 and, lo, there grew a strange tree ! The eyelashes 
 that he cast to the earth in the bitterness of his 
 sorrow had taken root in the generous soil and had 
 brought forth trees, the leaves whereof were for the 
 healinx of the nations. Dharma tasted of the leaves 
 of the tree, and the old weary yearning for sleep that 
 had cursed him for so long passed away, and he 
 became bright, strong and sleepless. Then went he
 
 The Origin of Tea. 7 
 
 forth, in the midst of the people, selling the leaves of 
 the strange tree, and they gave him welcome, for the 
 story of the old dame who had visited their nation 
 long ago still lingered in the hearts of the people. 
 He was probably a representative of the Atcherley and 
 Dawson of that early day out on the road, but that is 
 a detail. They used to eat the leaves till some clever 
 man learned how to extract the spirit and make the 
 same strength -giving, refreshing beverage as the old 
 woman sold from her inexhaustible cup. So tea be- 
 came the world's beverage, and the ungracious world 
 has forgotten the origin of the wonderful drink ; but, 
 then, new generations come and go, and each one has 
 sufficient worry of its own to keep it from dreaming 
 of the doings of a past time, and the world is fresh 
 every day to the new souls born into it : 
 
 " Fresh buds unclose where withered blossoms grew, 
 Fresh melodies ring out when skies are blue, 
 Nature is glad, and the world is ever new." 
 
 Some people say that Dharma was a clever 
 Indian tea-dealer, who knew the virtues of the plant 
 he had to sell, and took that method of introducing 
 it into China, but there are sceptics everywhere who 
 cast doubt on all good stories. Let Dharma be what 
 he may, he deserves a monument. People say that in 
 Edinburgh there are two great ones who have no 
 monuments, those are John Knox and Beeleezub, but 
 it seems to me that Dharma deserves a monument 
 from the Australians, as much as either of the 
 aforesaid gentlemen, and if any Australian town 
 wants to ornament itself, and do a good deal, it will 
 erect a monument to Dharma. But I set off to have 
 a long yarn about tea, and tell you all about it in one 
 act, and I can see it sticking out, that it will take a 
 fearful long time, because there are so many good 
 yarns about tea that come tumbling into my mind 
 that there seems no end to them. But T must tell 
 you this ! When I first sat besides a Chinaman in a 
 sampan, on a Chinese river, and saw him burning his 
 joss-sticks before a fat little god made of soapstone, I
 
 8 Australian Gossip and Storv. 
 
 turned up my boyish nose in haughty scorn. It 
 seemed such a silly religion. But when I found how 
 good and true that little josser was, how tender his 
 heart, and how faithful his life, it broke me up. 
 When, after months of companionship, T had to 
 leave, he gave me a present for my mother in the 
 far away country, and I realised that he was " allee 
 sammee me." That yarn about Dharma introducing 
 tea into China maybe a thousand years before 
 'Christ was born in Bethlehem," stirs strange feel- 
 ings in my heart Teamen were as smart then as 
 now, and the great mob was just as credulous, and 
 Dharma made good business, and I don't think one 
 bit the less of him for the good he did the world, 
 even if he did it to his own profit Tea has become 
 a blessed factor in the world's progress, and the man 
 who teaches the world to drink good tea, and sell 
 good tea, is a benefactor to his race. I remember 
 once but look here, gossips, this page is nearly full ; 
 I'll come back later on, eh ? 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 There were three of us travelling in Morocco- 
 one was a Spanish boy named Jose", another was a 
 Moslem named Mohammed, and the third was " yours 
 truly." Our horses were good enough to have been 
 Australians, for the way they travelled was perfectly 
 marvellous. They would slide down the banks of 
 dried up rivers, pick their way amongst huge, water- 
 worn boulders, and then climb up some steep bank 
 that looked absolutely impossible for a quadruped. 
 They travelled without food or water cheerily and 
 brightly from " very, very early in the morning O " 
 till nearly noon, when we pulled up at a caravanseri, 
 on the summit of a hill. I never go into such places if 
 1 can help it, for insects are fond of me. I was going 
 to Mecca once, as a Moslem pilgrim, and I could
 
 The Origin of Tea. 9 
 
 have got along fir^t class, but I couldn't stand 
 scratching. It makes me itch yet when I think of 
 my fellow pilgrims 1 If dirt meant piety, they were 
 horribly good. But all Moslem caravanseries are 
 past description. They are resting places for 
 travellers. I sent Mohammed in for some tea, and he 
 brought out three cups of warm tea, with no milk in, 
 but, instead, a leaf of green mint. It gave the tea a 
 curious taste, but it was tea, and even with the ad- 
 dition of green mint it was very refreshing. The 
 Arabs drink coffee, mostly, so it came as a surprise, 
 and a welcome one, to get a cup of tea. It is a 
 world-wide beverage and the greatest enemy that 
 whisky has ! 
 
 It always amuses me to hear teetotallers talking 
 about giving up strong drink, but a man must drink 
 something sometimes, and strong drink is often the 
 only decent thing you can get. I've gone into an 
 hotel in the bush to get some refreshment The 
 fellows who drank whisky got it decently served up 
 at once, and sometimes it's decent whisky, but the 
 chaps who want tea oh, horror ! They've got to 
 wait and wait until the kettle boils, and then they 
 get a big dose of bitter tasting fluid in thick earthern 
 cups, with leaden spoons and grimy tablecloths and 
 nameless horrors. I don't wonder that our people 
 prefer to look upon the wine, when it is red, ratht T 
 than upon tea, when it is black and strong and 
 poisonous. But tea is a good drink if properly pre- 
 pared ; and there are nice tea-rooms starting in a'l 
 our big towns, where you can get a cup of good ten, 
 nicely served. Tea, well used, is the best friend that 
 the teetotallers have, but it seems to me that they 
 don't use it right. That's a mere detail, but it's a i 
 important one. There are houses in this country 
 where you can get a good cup of tea, and I have a 
 profound admiration for the people who keep them. 
 They are amongst the world's benefactors, but 
 
 " The best service comes from nameless h;inds, 
 And the best servant does his work unseen."
 
 10 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 I started off to tell you about tea in China, but 
 you see how I wander ! It doesn't matter, does it ? 
 The liquor that was made from the leaves of trees 
 soon became popular all over China. The Brother of 
 the Sun, in his palace at Pekin, drank of the refresh- 
 ing fluid, and so did the humble Chinkie in his house- 
 boat at Canton Tea came into the life, into the 
 language, into the very religion of the race, just as 
 the Nectar of the Greeks and the strong Ambrosial 
 " Mead " of our Norse forefathers did. Good Chinkies 
 believe that when a man's body dies his soul does 
 not die, but goes on in new lives, in strange places, in 
 other forms. It does not rest, nor pause, nor stay, 
 until at last " the dewdrop slips into the slimy sea," 
 and the human life is mixed with the great soul of 
 life itself. It is told in the holy books how a wise 
 Chinaman found out the changes that come to the 
 soul. It is only when one has attained unto per- 
 fection, and has joined the passionless, waveless 
 life-in-death of the just men made perfect, that full 
 recollection comes. But one Chinkie remembered. 
 He had died as men die, and his soul had passed 
 from out this world of ours to that nether world 
 where the spirits go. Lin for that was his name 
 had lived long on earth and been pretty clever, and 
 he was greatly interested in all he saw in the strange 
 world to which he had come. He kept his eyes open. 
 He had a distinct recollection of what he used to be, 
 and his mind was all alive as to the possibilities of 
 the future. The king of the under- world I've for- 
 gotten his name, but he's just about the same as our 
 Pluto, was a nice, civil sort of person, and he invited 
 Lin to have a yarn and a cup of tea. Lin was, 
 Barkis-like, " willin','' and the tea was handed round. 
 Just as Lin was going to drink it he happened to 
 notice that the king's tea was clear as crystal, while 
 his own was rather muddy. He got an idea in a 
 moment. The tea he was going to drink had been 
 faked ! It was faked with " Nepenthe," which makes 
 you forget everything. Once you taste that liquor of
 
 The Origin of Tea. 11 
 
 the gods memory fails ! Lin watched his opportunity 
 and upset his cup of tea on the ground, and lived 
 remembering. Then when his soul passed to another 
 body he remembered his career, and that is how the 
 Bhuddists know so much about the other world. 
 Fellows have come back to tell them. They know 
 that 
 
 " While turns this wheel invisible, 
 
 No pause, no peace, no staying-place can be ; 
 
 Who mounts may fall, who falls will mount ; the spokes 
 
 Go round unceasingly." 
 
 The charm of getting a reporter into that other 
 would be very great, for his eyes are trained to see, 
 and my impression is that Lin was a reporter, or 
 rather, he was born for one. He did not drink the 
 tea, and he was able to report in the world that lies 
 beyond our ken. None of our reporters ever seem to 
 come back, do they 1 It's curious. But here's this 
 blooming page nearly full, and I haven't got a good 
 start made yet. Never mind ! I'll hang on to the 
 job - there goes our tea-bell now, and I'm always on 
 hand when the tea is served out. 
 
 CHAPTER TTI. 
 
 There are different drinks in different countries, 
 but it is odd to discover that the essential properties 
 of each are very like the others. You drink whisky 
 in the bush and bad whisky is very bad you drink 
 Sake in Japan, Samshaw in China, Aguardiente in 
 South America, Pisco in Peru, and firewater of many 
 kinds in different lands. I can't spell all these 
 names, but I've tasted them, so you'll let my spelling 
 go, won't you ? They are all alike in one thing, they 
 intoxicate. There's not such an endless variety of 
 teas, but there's a good many of them. One of the 
 oddest of them all is the South American Mate*. I
 
 r!2 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 once had a sweetheart named Candelaria Mayorga 
 Vaquero, and she lived in Chili. When we had an 
 evening at home we used to drink Mate The houses 
 had no windows to them. You carried the fireplace 
 out into the street in fine weather, and you kept 
 it in the drawing room bed-room and kitchen in 
 bad weather. The Mate* was boiled in a little black 
 tin that would hold about a pint There was a tube 
 in the tin. It was passed round, and we all took a 
 suck at it, old and young, toothless and blear-eyed, 
 young and pretty, dagos and gringoes. When I was 
 young I did as the Romans did when I was in Rome, 
 but I never liked Mate". The castanets and guitars 
 and the gay fandango were all right, and so was the 
 dark-eyed Candelaria, but Mate", pshaw ! That is 
 about the only really different kind of tea I ever met 
 with, but the natives drink it because it contains the 
 essential elements of tea. I'd tell you something 
 about the way some people make and drink coffee 
 the Arabs, for instance but I'm tired of saying what 
 I'm going to write. But when I begin to talk about 
 Candelaria it recalls a fearful lot of yarns that 
 I'm afraid I'll never get to. Some I'd better never 
 get to, eh ? 
 
 " I have loved, Oh, many a maiden kind, 
 
 And many a right good fellow ; 
 Where are they all ? So pipes the wind, 
 So foams the wandering billow." 
 
 But I must knock off here to make a remark on 
 a little story. The Chinamen used to have a mono- 
 poly of the tea trade, and nobody seemed to know 
 that the tea tree grew in India. They had lost the 
 run of it there. About the year 1820, a certain Mr 
 David Scott was in the northern provinces of India, 
 and he found a tree that he was sure was the tea tree. 
 He senb the leaves to the Government Botanist in 
 Calcutta and asked him to examine them. He did 
 so, and said that they were the leaves of the 
 Cornelia ! You know that tree, don't you ? Well, 
 my opinion of botanists is based on that fact. They
 
 The Origin of Tea. 13 
 
 are as a class, so full of technical terms that they 
 have very little room for brains, and they dare not be 
 original. I have known a lot of them, and enough 
 good fellows to prove the rule. It's a curious fact 
 that Botany and common sense very rarely yrow in 
 the same garden. Poor Scott was set on, and nobody 
 heard any more about Indian tea till about 1834, 
 when another man came across the same leaves, about 
 Kuch Behar and Rangpur. He said : " Camel ia 
 leaves or not, these are tea leaves," and, at the point 
 of the bayonet, as it were, he compelled the botanists 
 to admit that tea grew wild in the tiger-haunted 
 jungles of Northern India and Assam. 
 
 In 1836 a pound of tea was sent from Assam to 
 England, and in 1840 the great Assam Tea Company 
 was formed ; then came a wild boom in Indian tea. 
 This page is too small to give more than a few bald 
 facts, but you can work them out for yourselves, dear 
 gossips. When the Indian tea was discovered there 
 was a rush for tea land, just as there has been a rush 
 to a goldfield with us. Thousands were ruined by it, 
 for there were some curious factors to deal with. 
 First, the tea plant, the great strong, healthy plant 
 of Assam could not stand being coddled and fed, and 
 cared for. It loved the deep, damp jungles, where 
 snakes and tigers and deadly miasmas abounded. It 
 couldn't stand gardens, clearings and delicate atten- 
 tions, and it pined away You see, the tree was 
 indigenous to Northern India; that was its home, but 
 it could not stand the new conditions. You take a long, 
 cadaverous bushman to London, and see ho\v sick 
 he'll get. Yet his grandfather may have been a cor- 
 pulent, turtle-fed London alderman. A generation 
 or two makes a wonderful difference. The way that 
 was met was striking. You can bet your money on a 
 Britisher all the time for getting over a difficulty. 
 I'm proud of my pig-headed race. It's the North 
 Pole business over again. They'll try and they'll die, 
 and new ones will try some more. There is not much 
 sense in trying, but that doesn't matter. If it is
 
 14 Australian Gossip aud Story 
 
 difficult, that is enough They sent over to China 
 and learned the tricks of the trade. They imported 
 Chinkies, and tools, and all sorts of appliances, and 
 then they imported Chinese tea plants. They grafted 
 the alien Chink ie tea plant on to the Indian native 
 tea plant, and lo ! they had a splendid tea at once. 
 That filled the bill. Then the deep valley of the 
 Assam, where a mighty flood once found its way 
 through trackless jungles, became a great tea garden, 
 where thousands of natives, and hundreds of 
 Europeans lived, laboured, laughed, loved and died. 
 The tea plantations spread over the land, and when 
 the coffee crop failed in Ceylon, in 1876, the Cinga- 
 lese planters tried tea, so that now we have China 
 tea, Ceylon tea, Indian tea, and, it maybe soon, 
 Australian tea ! But there was another foe to the 
 progress of Indian tea that I've not mentioned. Once 
 people get accustomed to a certain kind of tea, they 
 won't take any other sort until their palate has been 
 educated up to it. Candelaria and her kindred 
 preferred Mate" to any other kind of tea. The 
 people in England preferred Chinese tea to Indian 
 tea. The latter was decidedly the best, and 
 when blended with Chinese tea it beat every- 
 thing in the world ; but the Assamese tea had 
 this to tight against. You can't break down the 
 prejudices of a nation in a day, and we are a conser- 
 vative gang, all of us. I see people in the bush 
 drink hideously black tannin and call it tea. It 
 would poison me ; but they like it, and they would 
 laugh my tea to scorn. This was what the Indian 
 tea had to contend against, but it won, thanks to the 
 cunning teamen, who blended the leaves so skilfully 
 that now we can drink the best tea in the world. It's 
 curious how plants of the same kind differ, isn't it 1 
 Yet it is just as Pope says 
 
 " Though the same Sun, with all diffusive rays, 
 Blush in the Rose aud in the Di'tnoud blaze, 
 We prize the stronger effort of his power, 
 And justly set the Gem above the Flower."
 
 A Cheese Mite. 15 
 
 G^eese /Aite. 
 
 CHAP said to me one day: "I'd write 
 you some news from our part of the coun- 
 try,, but there's hardly ever anything 
 happens in the bush." He meant it, 
 too, but that's what makes me laugh. He ought to 
 have said, " I'd write something for the Stock Journal 
 only my eyes have never been trained to see." That's 
 the real trouble. Lots of fellows think they could 
 write if there was anything to write about, but the 
 real writer is the one who makes something to write 
 about, who writes from within, instead of from 
 without When I've been off in some foreign country 
 as " war correspondent," or on the wallably looking 
 for my tucker, I've seen lots of things, and fellows 
 have said, '' Oh, I could write if I were off like that,' 
 but they couldn't, because they couldn't write about 
 the things they saw in daily life. I'd like to have a 
 long yarn with you, gossips, dear, about this writing 
 business, because this office is full of stories intended 
 for the Christmas competition. Some of the writers 
 have the real knack of putting things, and only need 
 practice to become good story-tellers, while others 
 have an idea that all you need to be a story-teller is 
 to be able to " sling English." Some can't even do 
 that. I'd like to be able to read those stories, and 
 then sit down and criticise them, but wouldn't I 
 catch it 1 Very few people can take a slating in 
 good part. We can't be impersonal and look at things 
 from the outside; we can't see ourselves as others see 
 us, and it's a mighty good job too sometimes. You 
 should hear me getting sat on at times, it would do 
 you good. But what's the odds ? I write what 1
 
 16 Australian Gossip and Story* 
 
 feel and know and think, and I never put on side, 
 and lots of people sympathise with me, so I can stand 
 the other " push " all right. 
 
 You wouldn't think that I'd set out to tell you a 
 yarn, would you 1 I'll bet you can't guess what I sat 
 down to write! That's the worst of a "Gossip." I 
 sometimes start on a yarn and never get within cooey 
 of it before this page is full ; but it doesn't matter, 
 does it 1 What I started to tell you about was 
 cheese mites. My wife won't touch cheese if there's 
 one " jumper " in it, and I'm not fond of live cheese 
 myself. There was a picture in one of the comic 
 papers lately of a " Johnnie " sitting in a restaurant, 
 and saying, with a plaintive look on his face 
 " Waitaw ! the Gorgonzola has eaten my bread." 
 Well, I don't care for cheese that has to be chained 
 up when not in use ; but the little ' jumpers " are 
 curious chaps. I was shipmates with an old skipper 
 once in the China trade, who looked on " jumpers " 
 as the best part of the cheese. He'd rake them all to 
 one side of his plate, season them with mustard and 
 pepper, and then eat them up, smacking his lips, 
 saying, " Afresh mess at sea is welcome." Everyone 
 to their taste, of course, but I don't care for a " fresh 
 mess " of that sort. I'd prefer " salt horse and hard 
 tack," or even damper if I knew the cook. I'm like 
 the chap Dickens talks about " I likes weal pies ; 
 but 1 likes to know the woman wot makes 'em." 
 Perhaps it's not well to want to know too much, for 
 it may be true, as the poet said 
 
 " From ignorance our comfort flows ; 
 The only wretched are the wise." 
 
 You get a dozen cheese mites on to a sheet of 
 paper, or on to the dining-room table, and if your 
 soul is attuned to holy things, you'll get as much fun 
 out of them as you will out of the rat e for the 
 Melbourne Cup. But you've got to be able to see 
 from within, as it were, and illuminate the cheese 
 mite race wilh the light of your own inner conscious- 
 ness. If you have a microscope, a strady hand, a
 
 A Cheese Mite. 17 
 
 keen eye and a lot of patience especially patience 
 you can see a lot in mites. If you have a low power, 
 cheap microscope and patience, you can see a lot ; 
 but even if you have no microscope, but only a seeing 
 eye and an understanding heart, you'll find a lot of 
 amusement and instruction in cheese jumpers. You 
 watch one little fellow. He looks like a white worm 
 made of rings. He's a bit like an earth-worm, and a 
 good-sized one is about a quarter of an inch in length. 
 Now watch him getting along on the soft tablecloth, 
 or on the paper. You can't see his feet, because " he 
 hasn't got none." He walks along in grand style, in 
 spite of that. I had a champion who could do four 
 inches a minute on a level track. But two inches a 
 minute is good time. My record is four ! That's 
 walking, I mean. When they come to jumping they 
 beat everything, except a flea. But I must tell you 
 about the walking part of the business first. 
 
 We always think that walking implies feet, but it 
 doesn't. We talk about a ship " walking the water 
 like a thing of life," and all the feet a ship has are 
 painted on her stem. The cheese mite has a little 
 brown horn at the thinnest end of him which is the 
 head end and he sticks that into the tablecloth and 
 pulls himself along. He does it so quickly that 
 you'd think he was really walking, but as a matter of 
 fact his locomotion is caused by a series of pulls, 
 which are so rapid that his movements look like 
 walking. He can get over the ground at a good rate, 
 too, for such a helpless little cuss. But to see him at 
 his best you must watch him jump. If you have any 
 sense of humor at all you'll laugh. He has two 
 funny little suckers on his tail, and when he wants to 
 jump he stands up on those suckers. Then he 
 bends his body down and catches hold of his tail with 
 the little brown beak, flattens his body together, and 
 jumps clear up in the air. I have seen a champion jump 
 24 times his own height. Talk about a circus, eh ? 
 or acrobats ? Why, cheese mites are clear ahead of any- 
 thing you ever saw. Fancy having a boy on the
 
 28 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 place who could jump his own height clear off the 
 ground at a standing jump. Why, you'd send him 
 to Sydney at once. But here's a miserable little 
 speck of a cheese mite that can jump 24 times its own 
 height at a standing jump, and then a man tells me 
 that nothing ever happens in the bush. Oh, pshaw ! 
 I had a champion mice that could jump eight inches 
 and a quarter ; but that was a record. I meant to 
 tell you a lot more about mites, but this page seems 
 to get full so mite excuse me so soon that you 
 can't tell much at once. But I'll come back to the 
 subject later on. Ta-ta, gossips. 
 
 There was a wealthy American " lumber man " 
 in Sydney lately who was taken to see our beautiful 
 Botanic Gardens. Some educated people were with 
 the rich " timber-man," and they went into ecstacies 
 over the glory and the beauty of the place. He said 
 nothing until a lady asked him what he thought of 
 the lovely garden, and then he said, scornfully 
 " What do I think of it, eh ? Wall, there isn't a tree 
 in the hull darned place that's worth fifty dollars for 
 lumber." Exactly. Some people have got lumber 
 souls, and they never can see beyond trade and 
 dollars and sordid things. Their souls are atrophied 
 through want of healthy exercise, and the world, 
 with all its miracles, all its beauty and grace and 
 holiness, is simply a place for accumulating money in. 
 Poor sinners ! it's an awful disease to have. It's not 
 quite as loathsome as leprosy, but if we could see 
 through shame to reality, we'd recognise it in all its 
 hideousness, and pity the affected ones. 
 
 Some people can admire cathedrals and pictures, 
 and big, throbbing, powerful engines, but they fail to 
 see the miracles of daily life and the infinite, unspeak- 
 able mystery that enwraps such a tiny thing as a 
 cheese mile. There are those walking in our midst 
 to-day who are said to be alive, who walk and t;ilk 
 and act, yet they are dead to every sacred emotion ; 
 they are automatons, money-getting machines, hideous 
 satires on the great Creator, whose image they are
 
 A Cheese Mite. 19 
 
 alleged to bear. There are those in our midst who 
 live in false, shallow, deceitful worlds, who are with 
 us in form, but not in heart, who never think of 
 aught save gold and trade and cunning devices for 
 cheating their neighbours And there is the one 
 who, as Adam Lindsay Gordon said 
 
 " Pursues a shadow 
 
 As one who hunts in a dream, 
 As the child who crosses the meadow, 
 
 Enticed by the rainbow's gleam " 
 
 Ah, me, gossips, we're a queer lot, when you 
 come to think about us, and who of all of you is 
 interested in a cheese mite ? 
 
 Do you remember my telling you about the tiny 
 brown beak under the cheese mite's head ? If you 
 look at that with a microscope of low magnifying 
 power, you'll find that it is composed of two curved 
 bones, which act, as I told you, as a means of locomo- 
 tion. Between these bones lies the mouth it does 
 not lie and when working inside the cheese these 
 claws act as teeth and scrape the food nicely for the 
 hungry little mouth. Close beside the claws, or 
 teeth, or feet, or whatever you like to call the horny 
 little processes, there is the breathing apparatus, and 
 this is an odd little tube built on a marvellous plan 
 I can't stop to tell you about it now, but when the 
 little fellow is stretched out it projects, and when he 
 contracts it is covered with a fold of skin. He has 
 another set of breathing tubes at the tail end, so that 
 when his head is buried in the cheese he can breath 
 through his tail. There's a lot of insects like that, 
 and if I can ever get time I must tell you about 
 them But you can take my word for this, there is 
 more real miracle about a cheese mite than there is 
 about the biggest ironclad afloat, or the finest cathe- 
 dral in Europe. But we've been educated to look 
 up and away from the lowly things of earth, and my 
 opinion is that if we looked more closely into the 
 tilings of earth we'd get a great deal nearer to heaven 
 than some of us are ever likely to get under present 
 circumstances
 
 20 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 " Aspire not too high, 
 
 Although the lark soars to the sky, 
 To utter forth its most melodious sound ; 
 
 Still, tis confessed, 
 
 It comes to earth to build its nest 
 Low in the ground." 
 
 If you care to watch the history of a " jumper," 
 you'll find yourself face to face with one of life's 
 deepest mysteries. You'll take off your shoes before 
 the miracle of the cheese mite's life, as a certain one 
 of old did before the burning bush. If the cheese 
 mite is not eaten as a " fresh mess," or destroyed by 
 fire, or cast out to perish in a friendless place, he does 
 not "die like a dog." Watch him ! Put him under 
 a fine gauze net, or a glass shade, with some cheese, 
 and see that it is kept moist, for a mite wants mois- 
 ture as well as a sheep. In a few days he will stiffen 
 out and "die." He will lie there hard and dark and 
 lifeless, and it may seem to you that the processes of 
 decay, which come to all life, have been set up in 
 him. But 'tis not so, for Nature, the dear old dame, 
 is weaving a new pattern from out the putrifying 
 juices of the cheese mite's body. Life is throbbing 
 in that dead shell, and when all is ready there will 
 come a resurrection morn, and a fly will arise from 
 out the dead matter, to begin a new life, under new 
 conditions. There is no death. What we call death 
 is but transition. When the fly shakes off the cere- 
 ments of the grave, and starts on a new life, it is 
 gray, and smaller than our common fly. It issues 
 forth into a strange world, fatherless and motherless, 
 without experience or education, and yet, borne by 
 the power which passeth all understanding, it works 
 out its little destiny, serves its little purpose and 
 obeys the law, which is more than some of us do. 1 1 
 mates with its fellows, and seeks for a cheese wherein 
 to lay its tiny eggs. How does it know a cheese 
 when it sees it ? Ah, ah ! Step softly, gossips ; 
 speak low ; you've struck a snag. Let's get away 
 from that question. The lady gray fly has a tiny
 
 A Cheese Mite. 21 
 
 r 
 
 gg-laying tube they call it an "ovipositor" and 
 when she has found a cheese she looks for a soft spot 
 in it, or a crack, and then she lays the eggs that will 
 one day be cunning little white jumpers. Then the 
 cheese is carried away and away, and nobody dreams 
 that the tiny eggs are in it, but they are, for 
 " nothing produces nothing " in this world, and you 
 must have eggs before you have jumpers, and you 
 must have gray-flies before you have eggs ; and so 
 goes the weary old world, life and death and joy and 
 woe, and beings' ceaseless tide, and some men say 
 that - l nothing ever happens in the bush."
 
 22 Australian Gosstf> and Story. 
 
 The " pat /X\an," 
 
 PARAGRAPH in the Worker the other 
 day set me to thinking. The writer was 
 kind and generous, and said pleasant 
 things about our little Stock Journal and 
 its editor, for which, I trust, we were grateful. 
 Newspaper men are seldom kind to each other in 
 print; I never could understand why. There seems 
 to be a fear in their hearts that if they say a kind 
 word about a contemporary that they will lose a 
 subscriber, and the other fellow will get a new one. 
 What a pitiful little spirit that is. I often wonder if 
 I'm built that way. I don't think so, for I never miss a 
 chance to say a good word about any newspaper man. 
 At least, I think so ; but we don't know ourselves, 
 do we ? Oliver Wendel Holmes said that every man 
 is a trinity ; there is the man he thinks he is himself, 
 then there's the man his neighbours think he is, and 
 then there's the man that he really is. Oh, but we're 
 a queer lot, and when you begin to try to figure out 
 what we all are, you get lost in the mists. I think 
 it would be good for us all just to sit down and 
 reckon our real selves up once in a while. Most of 
 us would grow ashamed of our make-up if we did. 
 But we might come out like Will Carleton's old 
 farmer, who had written down all the things about 
 Betsey 
 
 " Maybe you'll think me soft, sir, a-talking in this style, 
 But, somehow, it does me lots of good to tell it once in a 
 
 while ; 
 
 And I do it for a compliment 'tis so that yon can see 
 That that there written agreement of yours was just the 
 
 makin' of me." 
 
 But, cronies, that wasn't what I set out to say, 
 only that chap in the Worker set me to thinking,
 
 The '" Fat Man." 23 
 
 and I've wandered off the track a bit. He said that 
 this paper of ours belongs to the " fat men." Is that 
 you, gossips? It's not me, nor "us," nor "we." 
 There's no " fat men " in our office, neither literally 
 nor figuratively. If the phrase stands for injustice, 
 it's wrong ; if it seands for meanness, or mean men, 
 or hard men, it's wrong. If it stands for unright- 
 eousness in any sense, it's wrong ! This is not a " fat 
 man's " paper in any sense implied, and it never will 
 be if I've got a say in making it what it ought to be. 
 But I believe that the man on the Worker who 
 wrote that paragraph was under a wrong impression, 
 and I want to have a chat with him, because I think 
 that he's a good fellow, and does not misunderstand 
 us wilfully. But these class misunderstandings are a 
 lot like that story of "Betsey and I are out ;" have 
 you read it ? Just consider on what the old farmer 
 said 
 
 " The first thing I remember whereon we disagreed 
 Was something concerning heaven a difference in our creed : 
 Ve argued the thing at breakfast, we arg'ed the thing at tea. 
 And the more we arg'ed the question the more we didn't 
 agree." 
 
 Well, that's the way with a lot of us in this 
 world, and what I've discovered is that the alleged 
 " fat men " are not so very fat after all, and they are 
 a good deal like lean men, too. There's good and 
 bad amongst them, of course, but the bad ones seem 
 to come on top, mostly, in a row. My experience 
 leads me to believe that there are not nearly so many 
 " fat men " as there ought to be, Any man who will 
 go away out into the Never-Never country and take 
 up a run, who will work it and fence it and ring it, 
 and make tanks on it, and endure droughts and 
 floods and fires and ticks and pleuro and liver flukes, 
 and idle sundowners, deserves to get fat. He deserves 
 to make his fortune in ten years, and be able to live 
 the rest of his life in affluence. I've been a good 
 deal out in the bush, amongst the men who made 
 this country what it is, and I tell you that if I had
 
 24 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 my choice of dying of small-pox in the city and living 
 in a drought-cursed land, I'd hesitate. This alleged 
 4 fat man " has gone out into the wilds and made the 
 desert to blossom as the rose ; he has raised the wool 
 that is the staple product of our country, and has 
 made closer settlement possible, and what does he get 
 for it all ? Where are the pioneers who went out in 
 the early days ? Are they fat 1 Not much, my 
 brother, not much ! How many "fat men" are out 
 of debt ? How many of them are their own masters 1 
 When I get out into the bush and find a man 
 with a nice house and garden and pleasant surround- 
 ings, I'm as pleased to see it as if I had a share in 
 the place, because I feel that he deserves it. When 
 we can drive to the picnic races, or the show, and 
 have a good time, I'm glad, because I feel that he 
 earned it in the flood time, or the drought time, or 
 the bank-smash time, and I rejoice. But every such 
 man who has held on bo his place can tell you about 
 hard times and evil days and weary struggles. If he 
 is well oft' now, he would have been ten times better 
 off if he had exercised the same skill, the same 
 patience, the same energy in the city. When a man 
 is willing to go on to the land in the Never- Never 
 country, where the droughts come, and the floods and 
 the fires, I'd give him the land for nothing. He 
 deserves it. I'd let him free of all taxation, and I'd 
 carry his wool free to the seaboard. That would 
 develop our country. That would reward men for 
 going on the land. I'd like to see the fat men get 
 real fat, and grow very rich, because their industry 
 renders our cities rich. 
 
 Do you know what the city dwellers live on, we 
 non-producers? We live on extract of "fat men." 
 We live on the wool and the stock and the produce 
 that is raised in the country. If we had only coal 
 and iron and gold to live on, we'd soon grow like 
 King Midas, and curse the fatal gift that turned all 
 we touched to gold. We only see the " fat man " 
 when he comes to the city to spend his money, or at
 
 The " Fat Man? 25 
 
 show-time, when he's having his annual razzle-dazzle, 
 but wait till you see him at work. Wait till you see 
 his grass burning up under the blaze of a merciless 
 sun, and his stock staggering about in the vain search 
 for food and water. Wait till you see him gazing at 
 the steely sky, day after day, looking in vain for the 
 rain-bearing clouds, while the mortgage the death- 
 gripis slowly tightening on him. Ah, boys, it's 
 easy to talk about "fat men," to curse them, to tax 
 them and to say hard things about them, but when 
 you come to know them you begin to realise that the 
 " fat man's " life is not all beer and skittles This 
 paper, my " Worker " friend, is not a "fat man's" 
 paper, and I don't suppose it ever will be, but all I 
 want you to do is to disabuse your mind concerning 
 these alleged " fat men." The world is hard to the 
 happiest of us all, and 'tis pitiful that we should throw 
 stones at each other. Far better indeed that we 
 stand together in loving helpfulness to faco the 
 i nevi table, for, as the Indian sage hath well said 
 
 Be not mocked ! 
 
 Life which ye prize is long-drawn agony ; 
 Only its pains abide, its pleasures are 
 As birds which light and fly.
 
 26 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 te Learn te Jhjink, 
 
 ^HERE'S a Literary Society in Sydney, of 
 which I'm a member. You'd maybe think 
 that I'd be a bright and shining light in it, 
 but I'm not. There's several people in it 
 who are much smarter than I am, both men and 
 women, especially women ! One of their evenings 
 each session is devoted to "Short Speeches on Chance 
 Subjects." The way the subjects are arranged for is 
 this : At the previous meeting, two weeks before, 
 each member writes a subject on a piece of paper. 
 These are given to the president, who delivers them, 
 without selection, to the members present. Some of 
 the subjects proposed are peculiar ; but you take 
 your ration as it comes to you, and make the best 
 speech on it that you know how at the next meeting. 
 Now, gentle gossips, I propose to knock off here and 
 make some remarks about impromptu speaking. You 
 notice how men are often called on to make speeches 
 when they are totally unprepared for it. Well, that's 
 about the most trying position that a self-respecting 
 man can be put into. That man has my deepest 
 sympathy ! It makes me always think of that old 
 Englishman, who said on some such occasion nearly 
 300 years ago 
 
 " I know my life's a pain and but a span, 
 I know my sense is mocked in everything, 
 And to conclude, I know myself a man, 
 Which is a proud, and yet a wretched, thing." 
 
 My word, especially when you've got to make a 
 speech and don't know what to say when all eyes are 
 fixed on you ! 
 
 These literary people tried that plan of impromptu 
 speeches, but it didn't work. Very few people can 
 get up on the spur of the moment and make a speech 
 that is worth hearing, especially if the subject is just 
 put into his hands at the moment ; so they altered
 
 How to Learn to Think. 27 
 
 that, and gave you two weeks' notice. Every person, 
 with a sound mind in a sound body, ought to be able 
 to say something sensible on any subject with two 
 weeks' notice, so here's my little say. My question 
 was, " How can a man best learn to think 1 " That's 
 easy; isn't it ? because we all think, we think, without 
 ever having to learn how to do so, but we don't. Do 
 you remember that old conundrum, " Why is Herbert 
 Spencer like a big, hungry dog 1 " The answer is, 
 "Because he's a great thin-cur?" See! Herbert 
 Spencer is the philosopher of the Unknowable 
 (capital U, printer) ; he is the synthetic philosopher 
 of the nineteenth century ; he is the man who 
 teaches you that you don't know anything, unless it 
 be to know that you don't know anything. He once 
 wrote a book on, I think, Sociology, which shows the 
 difficulties that lie in the way of learning to think 
 straight. It impressed me a lot at the time, and I 
 expect that you could find all my thoughts in other 
 fellows' books, for I don't think that many of us 
 think for ourselves. There was a man named 
 Shakespeare once said that 
 
 " Nothing can we call our own but death, 
 And that small model of the barren earth 
 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones." 
 
 Before a man can learn to think clearly and 
 freely, he's got to get rid of bias, and if he does that 
 we call him a free thinker, but we make it into one 
 word, and call him a " Freethinker," and that's a 
 term of hissing and reproach. A Freethinker is a 
 bad man, a very bad man, worse than a thief, or a 
 pickpocket, or a forger. There's no hope for a Free- 
 thinker either in this world or the world which is to 
 come, and of such is the shibboleth of the blockhead. 
 Yet I've always had a wild desire to be a free thinker, 
 in the honest -sense of the word, and to do my own 
 thinking. Most of us put our thinking out, the same 
 as we put our washing. Some get it done in the 
 Methodist Laundry, and some in the Presbyterian. 
 Some patronise the Freetrade Laundry, while some
 
 28 Australian Gossip and Story, 
 
 prefer the Protectionist wash-house. But you'll 
 probably put your thinking out to be done for you in 
 the family laundry. That is, you'll grow up and 
 have your thinking done in the family groove. The 
 reason we have so few great thinkers is that we all 
 think in the groove that was made for us ; we're 
 victims of bias from the jump. Of course we don't 
 know it, because we each think ourselves free thinkers, 
 but we're not ! We're tethered to the family laundry. 
 " How can a man best learn to think ? " 
 
 Did you ever notice how I stick to my text ? 
 It makes me laugh sometimes when I come bang up 
 against the text I started with. I wander all over 
 creation sometimes and forget where I started ; but I 
 generally turn up the early part of my discourse to 
 see what the subject was. I think that's a compli- 
 ment to you, gossips, because it shows how much I 
 feel at home in your presence. Some fellows abuse 
 me for being too theological, and some kick me for 
 being too anti-theological ; but there's two points you 
 can bet on me for one is for always coming back to 
 my text, and the other is for taking up the collection ! 
 Seven and sixpence ! Can't you hear the rattle of 
 the collection box? But I'm off the text a bit. 
 " How can a man best learn to think ? " 
 
 Well, it's easy. First, he's got to learn a good 
 many facts. Now, facts are dry things to get hold 
 of, and plenty of people break down right there. They 
 lack knowledge. You can't get knowledge by intui- 
 tion. Old Euclid said (or was it Aristotle?) that 
 there's no royal road to mathematics, so there's no 
 royal road to knowledge. You've got to get filled up 
 with facts first, then you've got to get rid of bias You 
 see, if a man is born in Scotland, he's biassed in favor of 
 Scotchmen. He can't help it. If he's camping down 
 on the Murray, or out on the Paroo, and a fellow 
 comes along and yells, " Hoo's a' wi' ye th' day ? " his 
 heart melts within him at once, and the air grows full 
 of the odour of heather and hills and tatty pats and 
 things like that. He's got a Scotch bias. Look at
 
 How to Learn to Think, 29 
 
 me I'm a Cosmopolitan. I pretend to be above 
 sectional jealousies and little national biasses, but 
 I'm not. I'm British, and I think there's no nation 
 on earth like our own. I preach that " we're a' John 
 Tamson's bairns," but I mean British bairns. I 
 mean Australian, or English or Welsh, or Irish or 
 Scotch, or that push. You see my bias. I can't 
 help it. I'm sorry for it. I've got good friends in 
 all lands French, German, Dutch, Norse and all 
 sorts and I think a heap of them, too, but deep 
 down in my heart I feel sorry for them that they 
 weren't born under our flag. I'm proud of Britannia, 
 and proud of her strength and her power and I'm a 
 fool therefore and my heart ever responds to the 
 words 
 
 " There's never a flood goes shoreward now 
 
 But lifts a keel we manned, 
 There's never an ebb goes seaward now 
 
 But drops our dead on the sand." 
 
 Bias, eh 1 Bias ? We're all biassed, and you 
 can never be a thinker unless you are free from bias. 
 We're biassed in favour of our own religion, of our 
 own country, our own politics, and our own race. I'd 
 like to discuss this point with you, but you can see it, 
 can't you ? Before a man can think freely, and think 
 correctly, he's got to be free from self -interest, free 
 from passion and prejudice, and free from the 
 miserable thralls of this long-enduring bitter stress 
 that we call life. How many great thinkers have 
 we 1 How many great thinkers can we possibly have 1 
 Emerson says, in effect, that the human race is 
 chimpanzee in pupilage, but as soon as a man begins 
 to think for himself, he rises above the mass and 
 begins to control his fellows. But how few rise ! 
 How few think ! All we, like sheep, follow a leader, 
 and our leaders are mostly blind, but fluent, and we 
 altogether fall into the ditch. My space is full, 
 gossips, and I don't seem to have properly started ; 
 but it's a good text, <; How can a man best learn to 
 think?"
 
 30 Anstrahan Gossip and Story. 
 
 f he Salt ef the Earthj. 
 
 FEW people went out on a picnic one 
 day recently, and somebody upset the salt. 
 When enough had been picked up to serve 
 the needs of the hour, a genius said, 
 "What is salt?" Then a great hush fell on 
 the company, till one man explained it. He said, 
 "Why, salt is salt, of course." Then a ginger- 
 headed young student said : " I'll tell you what salt 
 is it's chloride of sodium." That ccushed the crowd. 
 They couldn't go back on that, because, don't you 
 see, very few people understand how a man can 
 darken counsel by words without knowledge, or can 
 hide his ignorance with fair phrases which signify 
 nothing. But that is a story by itself ! One of the 
 mysteries of my young life was this : How did the 
 sea become salt ? When I grew up I wrestled with 
 the problem. I've been down into great salt mines ; 
 I've stood beside the salt-pans of simple people on the 
 sea shore, and I've wrestled with salts and acids in 
 the laboratory, and I can't tell you what salt is. 
 But I'll tell you a tale ! 
 
 Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, 
 a very long time ago, the sea was all fresh water. 
 Nobody needed to take water with them when they 
 went on a voyage. A poor boy lived near the shores 
 of the fresh water sea, and he loved his mother very 
 dearly, for human hearts have always been the same, 
 and human love has always been an enduring quan- 
 tity in all the ages of the world's history. This boy, 
 whose name was Peter, wanted to sail away across 
 the mystical sea to some far country to get some of 
 the riches that lie beyond the visible horizon, to
 
 The Salt of the Earth. 31 
 
 bring to his dear old mother. One day a ship came 
 to the shore, and Peter got on board and sailed away 
 into the unknown. But it was a very hard, rough 
 life, and Peter was only a poor boy, and nobody was 
 good to him at all, and the glory of sailing on the 
 sea was not so great as he once thought it was. But 
 after many days they came to a beautiful island, and 
 everybody went to shore to trade. Peter had nothing 
 to trade with, and he was only a sweet-faced, simple 
 ooy, so nobody took any notice of him, for goodness 
 and honesty have never been of much account in this 
 world, unless they were accompanied by other virtues. 
 Peter wandered along the lovely roads and heard 
 the wild birds sing and saw the gorgeous flowers 
 bloom, but his heart was very heavy, for beauty and 
 glory won't fill the place of a good dinner. At last 
 Peter saw an old woman sitting at the door of a poor 
 cottage, and he went over to her and asked if she 
 would give him a drink of water. The old woman 
 saw how tired the poor boy was, and she gave him a 
 drink of water and asked him to sit down. She 
 found that he was very hungry, and she gave him 
 something to eat, and then she asked him about 
 himself. Peter told her all about his dear old mother, 
 who was waiting for him at home, and about his own 
 ambitions and his despair. Then the old woman's 
 heart was touched with tender sympathy, and she 
 said, " I will you something that will be worth more 
 than all the sailors or the captain will ever get, and 
 you can take it home to your mother and live happy 
 all your lives " She went to a cupboard and got out 
 what looked like a little coffee mill, which she set on 
 the table. " Now," said the old dame, " whatever 
 you want you've just got to say, ' Mill, mill, work my 
 will, and grind me out some ;' and tell it what you 
 want and you'll get it." She then asked him what he 
 would like. He remembered that his old mother 
 was very fond of oatmeal cakes with butter on them, 
 but she was so poor that she could hardly ever get 
 them, and Peter had longed for them very often on
 
 32 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 the sea. He asked for some oatmeal cakes with 
 butter, and the old dame just said, " Mill, mill, work 
 my will, and grind me out some oatmeal cakes with 
 butter on them." The mill began to turn, and out 
 came the loveliest oat cakes that ever were seen, 
 smoking hot and beautifully buttered. As soon as 
 enough had been ground the old woman said, " Mill, 
 mill, you've worked my will, avaunt." Then the mill 
 stopped. "Now," said the wise woman to Peter, "it 
 will grind out money, or jewels, or clothes, or any- 
 thing you want. Take it home with you, but never 
 let anybody hear you start it or stop it." Peter 
 went off gladly, and reached the ship, where every- 
 body laughed at the rusty old thing he had brought 
 back with him. 
 
 The ship sailed away, but the wind died down, 
 and for weeks and weeks the ship lay rolling on the 
 glassy sea, until nearly all the food was done, and 
 they were in danger of starvation ; then Peter thought 
 of his mill. He said to the captain, " What would 
 you like for dinner to-day ? " The captain said, 
 " What would I like ? you young wretch, why, I'd 
 like roast chicken, sweet potatoes and white bread." 
 " All right," said Peter, and he went into the cuddy, 
 started the mill, and got all that the captain had 
 sarcastically suggested. Then the ship was glad, and 
 Peter was the hero. But he refused to tell how he 
 got all the things. A breeze came, they reached an 
 island, and were lying at anchor, when the captain 
 and the mate resolved on finding out how the boy 
 procured all the things. They watched him carefully, 
 and they heard him start the mill, and then they 
 resolved on a cruel thing. They took the boy, tied 
 him hand and foot, and carried him ashore and killed 
 him. Then they up anchor and sailed away. They 
 laughed and rejoiced over their infamy, and enjoyed 
 their dinner greatly. The captain said, " Pass the 
 salt," but there was none, so they agreed to get it 
 from the mill. They got it out, and put it on the 
 cabin table. The captain said : " Mill, mill, work
 
 The Salt of the Earth. 33 
 
 my will, and grind me out some salt," aud the mill 
 started. As soon as the dish was full, the captain 
 said " Stop !" but it didn't stop. He cried, " Hold 
 on ; that's enough," but it kept grinding away. Soon 
 the cabin deck was covered with salt, but the mill 
 kept grinding on. Then the cabin began to 
 fill with salt, and still the mill kept grinding 
 on, and the captain grew angry and frightened, 
 and got his sword and cut the mill in two, but 
 each part kept grinding, and the more he cut it 
 the more salt came, and he was nearly smothered in 
 the white floury stuff. He had to go on deck at last, 
 and the ship was down by the stern, and by-and-bye 
 the ship sank with the awful load of salt, and the 
 wicked captain and all his crew were drowned, and 
 the mill keeps on grinding forever and forever at the 
 bottom of the sea, and that is how the sea became 
 salt. That's as good an explanation as any ; it's 
 better than " chloride of sodium," but I'll have to 
 quit now, only I'll tell you some more about salt 
 later on. There's one remark I've got room to add, 
 and it's this, and I hope you'll see the connection 
 
 " The spider spins in the furze, 
 And the dew begems his net ; 
 Fates unseen spindle whirrs, 
 And the thread with blood is wet." 
 
 Poor Peter. 
 
 You remember that joke of Darwin's about the 
 relationship between old maids and red clover? ReJ 
 clover is fertilised by humble bees, which are able to 
 do the work by means of their extra long suckers. 
 If mice are too plentiful they eat the nests of the bees, 
 and the clover will die out. But mice are kept dcwn 
 by cats. Old maids keep most cats, and if it wasn't 
 for old maids there would be no red clover. That 
 isn't all a joke, for it is a solid fact that everything 
 in the world is related to everything else, and the 
 simplest atom in the world is a part of the mighty 
 universe. You get a speck of dust in your eye ; that 
 speck may have belonged to a granite boulder, which
 
 34 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 was born in a geological convulsion when the world 
 was young. The history of the speck is the history 
 of the world. That speck was blown into your eye 
 by a wind which was produced by a barometrical 
 depression in the Antarctic Sea, and if you begin on 
 the wind you reach ultimately that weird statement 
 that " The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou 
 hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence 
 it cometh and whither it goeth." But Russell and 
 Wragge and that push are doing their level best to 
 tell us whence it cometh and how it cometh, and all 
 about it, so where are you? If you try to tell the 
 history of that speck of dust in your eye you need 
 
 " All the 'ologies of the colleges, 
 And the knowledges of the past." 
 
 That doesn't seem to have much to do with salt, 
 does it? but I wanted you to understand that salt 
 isn't such a simple thing as it looks. When you go 
 out into a lonely paddock and find some reddish- 
 looking rock salt lying there for the sheep or the 
 cattle roofed over by careful men - you, maybe, 
 think you could tell all about it in one act, but I'll bet 
 you couldn't. My comfort is that nobody can. The 
 only men who know that they don't know all about 
 it are the men who have studied the subject more 
 deeply, while the only men who know all about it are 
 the men who don't know how little they know. 
 There's a lot of things like that besides salt. You 
 ask a man if salt is a good barometer, and he will tell 
 you " Yes " if he hasn't studied the subject. Salt 
 gets damp and humid if it's going to rain. I've kept 
 salt for that very purpose myself, but it isn't true. 
 Pure salt is formed of a yellow, searching gas called 
 chlorine, and a bright metallic substance called 
 sodium. Salt is a chloride of sodium all right ; but 
 the air has no effect on that compound, not the 
 slightest. But the commonest impurity of salt is 
 magnesium chloride, and the air affects that. It is 
 the foreign element in salt that makes the barometer,
 
 The Salt of the Earth. 35 
 
 but as it is nearly always present, of course the state- 
 ment is half correct. Now, I want to make a 
 statement which has nothing to do with salt, but the 
 subject suggests it as it fits in here. People have 
 said to me, " I've got a microscope, but I don't think 
 it's any good, because I can't see live things in water." 
 Well now, look here, there are no live things in clean 
 water ; it is composed of two gases, oxygen and 
 hydrogen. When these two gases meet under elec- 
 trical conditions they make a fearful noise, which we 
 call thunder, and the water, which we call rain, is 
 produced. You can take an electric battery and 
 decompose water into two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, 
 leaving no residuum, and when you've got them into 
 separate bottles you can't see anything ; but if you 
 let them come together you'll get thunder ? It's a 
 dangerous experiment, and I once saw a professor 
 cut himself severely in trying it, in spite of all 
 precautions. You see the point, don't you ? There's 
 no life in clean water, and the best microscope will 
 fail to show you what's not there. Did you ever see 
 a fellow wander so much ? But if I don't say what I 
 ought to say to-day, the chance doesn't seem to come 
 again ! Now for salt ! 
 
 Along the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, 
 there runs a salt deposit. It is over 500 miles long, 
 it has been proved to be over 100 miles wide, and, in 
 some places, it is 1,200 feet deep. Now, bring out 
 Peter's coffee mill, or chloride of sodium, or deposition 
 by evaporation, or any of your theories you may know 
 about salt, but when you go down into a mine in 
 Galicia, you break up. In one of these Galician 
 mines they have been working for more than six 
 centuries. But what little impress these human ants 
 have made on the mighty deposit in all those blood- 
 stained centuries ! They have hewn out thirty or 
 forty miles of sunless streets in that vast deposit of 
 pure salt. They have hewn chapels and images, 
 saints and shrines, in that under-world, out of glitter- 
 ing, white, glassy salt, and the air has no effect on
 
 36 Australian Gossip and Story. . 
 
 them at all, because the salt is almost absolutely 
 pure. In the year 1698 these poor Galician workmen 
 began and hewed out a chapel to St. Anthony, making 
 the dooi-s, the altars, the ornaments, everything of 
 pure salt. There the glories of the chapel and the 
 saints still endure, in the glassy, ghastly, saline air. 
 Because the salt is so pure, it is not barometric ; it is 
 not affected by the atmosphere. But fancy living in 
 a town like that ! If a man was too fresh it would 
 tame him down, eh ? 
 
 How was that immense body of salt deposited .' 
 What is salt? Whence came salt? Here's one 
 theory. The rivers of earth bring down salt to the 
 sea. When the fierce sun sucks up the sea to form 
 clouds, the salt is left behind, and as the ages of 
 evaporation pass on, the remainder is forever charged 
 with salt. Aye, master, that is indeed a grand 
 theory, but we have only moved the problem back a 
 single step. Where did the salt in the land come 
 from ? If the great rivers that run through the salt 
 lands carry their salt to the sea, we can understand 
 that, but how came the sea salt in the first plan' if 
 there was no coffee mill 1 As soon as you begin to 
 ask questions about salt, and lay out the particulars 
 of the problem, you begin to realise, with Herbert 
 Spencer, that " The simplest phenomena in their ulti- 
 mate essence are unknowable." The man at the 
 picnic who said that salt is chloride of sodium was 
 very wise, because he was unaware of his own 
 ignorance, but I must try and tell you some of the 
 things I think I know about salt, so I'll see you 
 later. Ta-ta ! 
 
 What is salt ? Chloride of sodium ! Salt is the 
 miracle of life ! Salt is the most marvellous, mystoi i< >us, 
 common combination in all our wonderful world. It 
 is more valuable than diamonds or precious stones. 
 We could do without jewels, but thinkest thou we 
 could do without salt? Lord Somerville to IK a 
 horrible story about the tortures inflicted on poor 
 Dutch prisoners in the old long ago. He said : " 'i hey
 
 The Salt of the Earth. 37 
 
 were kept on bread alone, unmixed with salt, as the 
 severest punishment that could be inflicted on them 
 in their moist climate. The effect was horrible, for 
 these unfortunate wretches are said to have been 
 devoured by worms engendered in their stomachs." 
 The horror of that statement is too deep for thinking 
 about, but salt is a good thing. It is like fresh air, 
 pure blood and good health it is never valued till 
 lost. I often smile at the philosophy hidden in what 
 some people think was a silly remark "Salt is what 
 gives eggs a bad taste if you don't put any on." 
 
 Ah, well, I'd like to tell you how deeply salt is 
 interwoven with this life of ours, how it mingles with 
 our tears, how it is scattered through earth and sea, 
 and starry worlds ; how in one place it is carried in 
 solution, in another place it bubbles from the earth 
 in a brine spring, while in yet other places it forms 
 hills and mountains and solid rocks. And then when 
 you ask a chap what salt is, he sweeps you out of 
 court with a wave of his hand, and shuts you up by 
 saying " it's chloride of sodium." That's the idea 
 cover up your ignorance with words. I wouldn't 
 mind a bushman, who'd never studied in the schools, 
 saying that, but think of a student, bah ! John 
 Buskin says : " What a boundless capacity for sleep 
 and for serene stupidity there is in the human mind." 
 My word ! 
 
 But I don't seem to get on with my yarn, do 1 1 
 The fact is there's so much to tell, and so little space 
 to tell it in, that it scarcely seems worth while 
 beginning, because you come to the end of the space 
 so soon but I'll hang on now, honest ! 
 
 If you look at the map of India, you'll see the 
 Runn of Cutch on the north-west coast, away up 
 above the Arabian Sea. Well, that is the great salt 
 mine of India, and the natives used to fight like tigers 
 to gain possession of that part of the peninsula, 
 because it was the real treasure land. They used to 
 make salt from the sea-water on the coast, and if you 
 have a good atlas it will show you how the shallow
 
 38 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 seas lent themselves to that. In a hot country like 
 India they must have salt, and nil the animal that is 
 in the human being and that is a lot comes to the 
 top in the struggle for it. But the Indian salt lake 
 lies far back from the Runn of Cutch to the south- 
 east, in the fair Rajpootana, where the Aravulli Hills 
 melt away into the barren plains. Down in the 
 valley there lies a lake about 20 miles long and 7J 
 miles wide in the rainy season. We own that now. 
 Our Queen took it over for the good of the natives. 
 We always do that, you know for the good of the 
 natives It was in 1869 that the "Widow "took 
 over the Sambhar Lake, and between you and me, 
 gossips, it was a good idea. 
 
 If you went out to that lake as the rainy 
 season was about over, you'd find it one of the 
 loveliest places on earth. It looks like a sheet of 
 silver set in a mirror of glorious green to reflect back 
 the clouds of the day and the twinkling stars of the 
 dusky night. The green woods are all alive with 
 the gorgeous bird-life in India. The saline hills are 
 bursting with young green life. The great rose- 
 coloured flamingoes, with their brown and white 
 young ones, wade in the bright waters, engaged in 
 that far-spread business of picking up a living. 
 Life is the same on the Sambhar Lake as in Australia, 
 as far as the deep things are concerned. Life is the 
 same there to-day as it was 10,000 years ago. The 
 living things of this spring come and pass, but new 
 lives come again. There is no death, it is only tran- 
 sition. The wheel of life turns round, or, as the 
 Indian puts it 
 
 "The whirling wheel comes up again, 
 And new lives bring new sorrows to be borne : 
 New generations for the new desires, 
 Which have their end in the old mockeries." 
 
 I must tell you the old Indian legend about that 
 lake, even if I've got to write another chapter about 
 salt. You're not in a hurry, are you ? Neither am 
 I. Well, listen Once upon a time, and a very good
 
 The Salt of the Earth, 39 
 
 time it was, a very long time ago, there was a holy 
 man lived in a temple, in the beautiful valley of the 
 Sambhar Lake. He was so fearfully good and con- 
 templative that he used to forget his tucker. (I'd 
 like to stop and make a remark on the fact that idle 
 men used to be counted holy men, but I'm telling a 
 tale.) But the gods didn't forget him, for every day 
 a cow used to come to the temple and milk itself 
 into the old man's brass dish, which stood on the 
 floor. One day an inquisitive cow-herd was on the 
 watch and saw the performance, and got a good deal 
 interested. He saw the holy man go to take a drink 
 of the milk, and when he did so he took an amulet 
 out of his mouth and laid it on the carpet. The 
 cow-herd slipped over to the prayer-carpet and put 
 the amulet into his mouth, and he discovered a curious 
 thing. He found that he was taken, in the spirit, to 
 visit every holy shrine in India in a minute of time. 
 I'd like to expand on this subject, but you can think 
 out the fun of that for yourselves. I've got to skip 
 on, for this page is horribly small. That cow-herd 
 was pious, so he took the amulet out of his mouth 
 and restored it at once to the holy man. Honesty 
 must have been as rare then as now, for the old 
 gentleman was so pleased that he rewarded the honest 
 fellow. He sent him to the goddess Sumtra Deva, 
 who made him a horse and told him to ride eastward 
 on his steed and never look backwards. You remem- 
 ber Mrs. Lot ? You remember Orpheus and Eurydice ? 
 Well, the Indian josser was the same. The poor 
 cow-herd set off, and I'll bet he meant all right, bub 
 as he rode under a tree he lost his turban That 
 was easy enough, and he looked back for it, just as 
 you'd do yourself, and that ruined him. The horse 
 wouldn't go any further, and the cow-herd was done 
 for. He just had to start and walk back, and lo ! it 
 turned out that if he had gone travelling east for 
 long enough all the world would have been covered 
 with gold and silver, for the Sambnar Valley was 
 that now. The wise men knew that if gold broke
 
 40 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 out that way there would be a "rush," and the place 
 would be pegged out at once (this was millions of 
 years ago, you know), and they didn't want that. 
 The wise men of Raj poo tana asked the cow-herd to go 
 and request Sumtra Deeva to take back her gift. 
 She did, just like a spiteful woman. Instead of 
 turning it back to the green woods and flowery 
 meads, as of yore, the jealous old cat made it into a 
 bitter salt land, and that's how the Sambhar Lake 
 came to be what it is to-day. But I'll tell you some 
 more about the lake another time. 
 
 When you travel out into the bush after a good 
 healthy rainy season, and watch the wild flowers 
 springing up on every side, you think what a glorious 
 country Australia is You almost envy the fat sheep 
 and lazy cattle that have such boundless stores of 
 feed. You do envy the squatter who owns the broad, 
 fat lands and the countless flocks and herds, and you 
 wonder how it comes that wealth and happiness are 
 so unevenly distributed. But, perhaps, you may 
 come at another time, during a weary drought, when 
 no green thing is visible on the face of a scorched 
 earth ; when the air over the paddocks is full of dust ; 
 when there is not a drop of water to moisten your 
 parched tongue, and Dante's Inferno rises to your 
 mind. You will see dead sheep and cattle every- 
 where, and hopeless, dispirited men You will hear 
 of mortgages and overdrafts, of a fearful death rate 
 amongst the cattle, and of the despair of the men on 
 the land, because the skies are brass. Then you 
 think it would be better to be a member of Parlia- 
 ment than a "bloated squatter.' Well, the Sambhar 
 Lake is the same way. 
 
 After the rainy season it is a picture of loveli- 
 ness. The birds sing in the trees, the young green 
 shoots of verdure cover the hillsides, and the shallow 
 lake is a picture. But there comes a few hot days, a 
 few hot winds, and the glory of the lake fades away. 
 'Tis only a superficial beauty. The flowers and 
 grasses fade and die beneath the fierce Indian sun,
 
 The Salt of the Earth* 41 
 
 the birds depart, and the valley becomes the most 
 hideous in Rajpootana. The hills grow gray with a 
 saline deposit that seems to exude from the earth, 
 and the shallow lake begins to dry up. At its 
 greatest depth it is only about four feet deep, and 
 there are miles and miles of it that are even less than 
 that. Fancy a shallow lake like that in one of our 
 Western plains ! We have them, too, but they are 
 not charged with salt as this one is. When the sun 
 has sucked up the water it becomes one vast bed of 
 glittering white salt, from two inches to less in 
 thickness. Here and there are black pools of brine 
 that are deeper than the rest, but they, too, will be 
 evaporated at last by the power of the fiery-eyed god 
 of day. 
 
 You know what salt is, don't you? We all 
 know ? Everybody knows what salt is ! But if 
 we've wrestled with the problem at all, we soon find 
 out that we don't know, and this salt that crystallises 
 on the bed on the Sambhar Lake reveals itself to us 
 as the great mystery of nature. This salt coraes 
 from the hills and the land about, and it crystallises 
 on the black mud that forms the bottom of the lake ; 
 but to see it crystallise is a miracle. Salt crystallises 
 in cubes. Everything in the world has a form of its 
 own, but the science of crystallography is too deep to 
 wrestle with here. All I'm going to do is to stop and 
 make a remark about crystallisation as seen through 
 the microscope. Take a glass slide, warm it slightty, 
 then rub it with salt water and put it under the 
 microscope, and you'll see Nature working her miracle ! 
 It willfreeze, asit were, on the warm glass. Betterstill, 
 take some Epsom salts and rub the liquid on the glass 
 and watch the crystallisation. It beats all the shows 
 you ever were at. You see the ways of the dear old 
 dame who rules the universe, and if your soul is 
 sufficiently illuminated to see the miracleyou'll holdme 
 to be your friend for evermore. John Oliver Hobbes 
 says : " To be wilfully honest with another human 
 being for even half-an-hour is enough to establish
 
 42 ' Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 some claim, at all events, to an immortal soul. Well, 
 if you watch old Nature at her work of crystallisation 
 for half-an-hour honestly, you'll know whether you've 
 got a soul or not. 
 
 I set out with the firm determination to tell you 
 about the Sambhar Lake, in Rajpootana, and see 
 where I've got to, but what's the odds 1 I've thought 
 of a whole lot of other things that I must tell you 
 about, and this is the last yarn about salt, and I don't 
 care whether I get finished or not, so there ! The 
 salt crystallises on the soft black mud of the lake, 
 and the natives wade in the mud and lift it off. They 
 lay it in little heaps, all the way along, as they travel, 
 until they have skimmed all the salt off the lake. 
 Women then come with little baskets and carry the 
 piles to the shore. The Government officials receive 
 it at the stores, which may be several miles distant, 
 and they weigh and measure what is brought in. 
 They gather as much as 100,000 tons of salt in a 
 season from the Sambhar Lake, so you can guess the 
 enormous value of such a salt lake in the olden times. 
 No wonder the Indian tribes bathed the shores of the 
 lake in blood to obtain possession of it. But it 
 belongs to Queen Victoria now, to the Widow of 
 Windsor 
 
 " We've bought her the same 
 
 With the sword and the flame, 
 
 An' we've salted it down with our hones. 
 
 Poor beggars, it's blue with our bones." 
 
 The salt crystallises on the surface when the 
 water evaporates, but the cruel little crystals form in 
 the mud as well, the heat of the sun works down into 
 the mud, and the crystals form then. When the 
 bare-footed natives wade into the mud, the crystals 
 tear their human skin, and the poor dusky swimmers 
 come out all bleeding and scored. Then the merciless 
 Indian sun shines down on them, and it looks as 
 though life were not worth living. Yet these dark 
 children of the Indian land are our fellow subjects. 
 They are part of the Widow's kingdom, simple, gentle,
 
 The Salt of the Earth 43 
 
 patient creatures, who are as human as we Austra- 
 lians are. Think of the life they had at places like 
 the Sambhar Lake ! Poor souls, Queen Victoria has 
 come to bless them, for a railway runs to Sambhar 
 now, and the vast salt deposits are carried far afield 
 by the iron horse, but life is still hard and cruel to 
 them. I'd like to tell you some more about salt, 
 about why it is unlucky to spill salt at the table, and 
 a lot more things, but I've said too much already, and 
 I pray that 
 
 " Through the naked words and mean 
 Ye may see the truth between." 
 
 When I saw that salt spilt at the picnic, and 
 heard that salt was " chloride of sodium," it filled me 
 with woe. I wanted to tell you about Galicia, 
 Sambhar, and the salt mines of Cheshire, but, some- 
 how, I talk too much, for I'm atraid of piling up 
 facts in too solid a mass. But I fear that my facts 
 get diluted too much, yet, gossips, you bear patiently 
 with me, aud I'm grateful, but I must not trespass 
 on your good nature. I'll try and not worry you 
 with science, yet I do want tell you of the things that 
 have filled my own life and widened my my own 
 horizon. All I can say is, that I'd like you all to 
 think on the subject we gossip about, and then you 
 will become " the salt of the earth." 
 
 J. A. MACKINNON & CO., 
 
 AUCTIONEERS, 
 
 Stock, Station, Financial and General Agents. 
 
 Valuators under the Real Property Act. Corresponding 
 Agents all through the Colonies. 
 
 Have for Sale some very choice Agricultural and Pastoral 
 
 Properties from 300 to 10,000 acres at reasonable prices 
 
 and on easy terms. Inspection invited.
 
 44 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 Breeding l*|urqan Beiqgs. 
 
 was making a passage in a steamer once upon 
 a time, when the yellow fever broke out in 
 our midst. We had picked up the foul 
 disease in Aspinwall, on the Isthmus of 
 Panama, or else in Jamaica, but nobody seemed to 
 care much where we got it all that we were certain 
 of was that we had got it. The chief engineer was 
 the first to die, and we sewed him up, and had a 
 quiet little funeral service over him at midnight. 
 We stopped the ship to slip him overboard, but that 
 alarmed the passengers, so we never stopped for 
 another funeral. When a man died we sewed him 
 up in canvas, with a few grate-bars at his feet for 
 sinkers, and laid him aside till it grew dark and the 
 passengers were asleep, then we gave the dead one 
 his passage over the side. 
 
 When we sat together, the rest of us, with a 
 " deader " or two hidden away, we used to discuss 
 every subject under heaven except yellow fever. 
 That was the subject that lay the nearest to all our 
 hearts ; we didn't know whose turn would come next, 
 and, being human, we were sore afraid, yet we spoke 
 not of our terrors to each other, but rather, each 
 man tried to cheer his neighbour by appearing uncon- 
 cerned. You and I, gossips, are like the men on 
 that ship ! We have thoughts that are too deep for 
 utterance ; we think things that we may not speak ; 
 we muse on matters that we may not discuss, and yet 
 we are fools for not speaking out, but who among us 
 dares to bell the cat? And how may we speak? 
 Was it not Longfellow who said ? 
 
 " I wonder if ever a song was sung 
 But the singer's heart sang sweeter? 
 
 I wonder if ever a rhyme was rung 
 
 But the thought surpassed the metre ? "
 
 Breeding Human Beings. 45 
 
 A long time ago, dear gossips, perhaps a year 
 ago, I had a gossip with you on the subject of breed- 
 ing human beings. I said that we in Australia 
 breed the best sheep in the world, and we breed, also, 
 some of the meanest human beings. And we do, 
 don't we? The reason is simple. We apply the 
 rules of common sense to the laws that govern the 
 propagation of domestic animals, but we leave the 
 perpetuation of our own race to chance, to passion, 
 to crime, to infamy, and to ignorance. The men who 
 sat on the hatch on that steamer with a couple of 
 corpses near to them, yet never discussed yellow 
 fever, were wise, were manly, were heroic compared 
 with us. We are fools and blind, wrapped up in 
 social habits that enslave us, bound in hideous old 
 superstitions that curse us, and kept back from 
 social freedom and world- wide happiness by our 
 bestial ignorance. 
 
 When I dared to touch on the subject of breed- 
 ing human beings, there arose in these columns a 
 bitter controversy on the subject of education, which 
 was carried on under the heading of " Breeding 
 Human Beings ;" but it was a farce, masters, a farce, 
 for nearly all the writers missed the point. Yet the 
 discussion was valuable as showing how the words 
 had stirred thoughts, and men wrote to me about the 
 article from the uttermost ends of the earth. One 
 large-souled man, writing from Chicago, U S. A. a 
 man I had never seen or heard tell of, the editor of a 
 great paper said, " A doctor's certificate should 
 accompany a marriage license." Exactly, neighbors ; 
 that's the very idea ! But, if you want to know what 
 a solid grip Mrs. Grundy has on us all, you dare to 
 mention the subject to nice people, especially to nice, 
 pious people, and you'll get crushed. You'll be made 
 to feel yourself a fool, if not a knave. 
 
 Listen. I knew a family in well, never mind 
 where that had broad-shouldered, pure-blooded sons. 
 They were a magnificent lot of people. One of the 
 sons fell in love with a pretty woman who came of
 
 46 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 evil stock. There was drunkenness, scrofula, and 
 crime in her family. The old settlers on the river 
 knew her record, and shook their heads at the 
 marriage. They knew how Nature works, and they 
 understood that, though the woman herself was 
 bonnie and bright, sorrow would come to her children, 
 for Nature will not be contemned of any. She visits 
 the sins of the fathers on the children, even unto the 
 third and fourth generations of them that strive to 
 walk uprightly. Yet not a soul dared to raise his 
 voice in protest against the union. Not a man dared 
 to say aloud what he thought in secret, or even what 
 he whispered to his fellows. Yet the deep, awful 
 blight of heredity followed that union, and the earth 
 was cursed with woe because of it. Children were 
 born into the world to bear the curse of evil deeds 
 done in the long ago. Poor, frail, feeble bodies were 
 endowed with life, and they in turn conveyed the 
 blight to others, and the evil currents of the " love 
 match " are flowing to-day through the earth. 
 
 People look pityingly on the sick ones and 
 murmur something about " God's will," as though God 
 had sent trials of this kind on earth, as though God 
 were cruel, unjust, merciless, horrible. No mortal 
 man could conceive a demon more dreadful than the 
 God some orthodox people figure to themselves 
 with the smug approval of their ignorant but well- 
 meaning neighbours. No wonder that our gaols, 
 hospitals, poor-houses are full to overflowing ; no 
 wonder that we are cursed with idle, vicious good-for- 
 nothings. We try to educate them, to enlighten 
 them, to " convert " them. We put them in gaols 
 and reformatories, and weep over them, aye, we pity 
 them, but we dare not so much as hint at the source 
 of the evil, because we say, in our blind folly, that 
 " God sends little children," and we say, too, poor 
 fools that we are, that little children are born into 
 the world with pure minds, ready to have the charac- 
 ters of their surroundings written on them. It's a 
 lie, false, shallow, pitiful, born of our own dense
 
 Breeding Human Beings. 47 
 
 ignorance. The man is the outcome of the lives of 
 those who went before him, and the Hindoos grasped 
 a magnificent truth in that strange statement that 
 
 " Eacli man's life 
 
 The outcome of his former living is ; 
 The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes, 
 The bygone right breeds bliss." 
 
 You say we cannot mend things. No, we cannot, 
 until a sufficient number of us dare to make our 
 voices heard in the world and we will, too, but not 
 much in your day nor mine, gossips. We die, but 
 the race goes on ! Some day men will awaken to the 
 awful truths of heredity, and they will cry for social 
 reforms compared to which freetrade, protection, 
 land tax and kindred matters will be as na.ught. 
 But we must stumble blindly on through the years of 
 gloom and sorrow, waiting for the age of sense to 
 dawn on a bestial earth. Did you ever insure your 
 life ? How they enquire concerning the ages of your 
 relatives and the cause of their deaths ! How they 
 enquire about the character of the diseases that 
 afflicted them all, and if you make a false return your 
 insurance will be declared null and void. Some day, 
 when men are wiser, such a certificate will be required 
 on the altar, and if any parson marries a couple 
 without a clean record, then he will be dealt with as 
 Nature deals with incapables. But we are a long 
 way from that yet, because we are fools and blind j 
 yet am I comforted in fighting, because that wise 
 man in Chicago has heard my cry in the Stock and 
 Station Journal, and has written to say that " A 
 doctor's certificate should accompany a marriage 
 license." Gossips, we have but touched the fringe of 
 this awful question. Some day, if life and strength 
 are spared, we'll come back to it, eh 1
 
 48 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 Jhe jla\/e ef th[e pipe. 
 
 5 HERE | was once a man who was badly 
 afflicted with his eyes. The doctor was 
 called in and prescribed for him. In giving 
 instructions to the patient, the doctor said : 
 "Do you smoke?" "Yes, heavily." "Well, you 
 must give up smoking at once, and I'll call back in a 
 week." At the end of a week they were still bad ; 
 at the end of three weeks they were still bad. Then 
 the doctor asked, " Are you sure you have given up 
 smoking ? " " No," said the patient, " I have not." 
 " Then," said the medico, " you must say good bye to 
 your eyes." Then the poor man heaved a deep sigh, 
 and said, " Good-bye, eyes." Then the band played, 
 and men who loved their pipes sympathised with the 
 sick fellow. Better to be a beggar boy with an 
 appetite than an old, rich man with the gout. Better 
 to be young and strong, and able to enjoy your pipe, 
 than to be old and wise and unable to smoke. Better 
 be but that's enough. The men who smoke can fill 
 in the rest, and the folks who don't smoke can't 
 understand. 
 
 Dear gossips, excuse me for knocking off a 
 minute to have a yarn. If nobody but the people in 
 the bush read this page, I'd tell you lots of little 
 yarns about what I think and feel and do, but you 
 can't keep other people from reading it, and I don't 
 want to take all the world into my confidence. If 
 we put a big notice on top of this page, " For I nisi i 
 people only," you'd have all the rest reading it, and 
 that's just what we don't want. That's the tWling I 
 have, and I'd like to be able to get over it. Then, 
 too, it's not easy to say what lies deepest in your 
 heart when you know you'll meet some chap in town
 
 The Slave of the Pipe. 49 
 
 some day who'll say, " Hello, ' Gossip.' " There are 
 very few of us wear our hearts on our sleeves, and 
 we don't like to let people know exactly what we 
 think, do we ? I tell you, it's awfully hard to be 
 honest in this world. It's just as Omar Khayyam, 
 the Persian poet, said 
 
 " 'Tis but a day we sojourn here below, 
 And all the gain we get is grief and woe, 
 And then, leaving life's riddles all unsolved 
 And burdened with regrets, we have to go." 
 
 I knew a man in Sydney that I always looked 
 upon as a man with no sorrow. He was a Bohemian 
 chap, clever, big-hearted, easy-going and tolerant. 
 Perhaps he was a bit too thoughtful for a real 
 Bohemian, because sometimes when I'd meet him he'd 
 look very serious ; but as soon as he saw me the 
 clouds would flee away, and the genial soul would 
 shine through his eyes. Occasionally we'd adjourn to 
 a restful place for a little spiritual refreshment and 
 have a quiet smoke and a yarn, and we'd enjoy it, 
 too. You see, when everybody is liable to read this 
 page, you don't like to say things of that sort, for if 
 you're a writer you've got to pretend to be better 
 than common people. But you know me now, dear 
 gossips, don't you ? You know I'm only human and 
 made of clay, and just like the rest of the crowd, 
 don't you ? Still, we don't like saying things out 
 too loud, for fear of the fellows who are not in 
 sympathy with us. Well, one day recently I met 
 my friend, and we had a pleasant little spell, and 
 were just parting, when he dropped a word or two 
 that gave me pause His life was not a happy one. 
 His pleasant smile but hid a sad heart ; his genial 
 ways covered a weary spirit and a broken life. 
 
 Then we come back to the old, old story can 
 you read your neighbour's heart 1 Do you kno-o the 
 people you rub shoulders with every day ? Ah, boys, 
 every heart has its own bitterness ; every life has its 
 own shadow ; every cupboard has its own skeleton. 
 We say things like that, all of us, but we don't
 
 50 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 realise them. We think we mean them and under- 
 stand them, but we don't. Some day, riding back 
 from the service at a graveside, we catch a glimpse of 
 a laughing face, and we wonder how the world can 
 laugh when our sunshine has faded. Yet, oftimes, 
 men and women can say, and say truly, " Death is a 
 sweet sorrow compared to my woe." When my 
 friend spoke I realised with a crushing force how 
 little I knew of his life. A cruel, horrible disease 
 was eating his life out. I cannot tell you, gossips, 
 dear, how I came to understand the nature of that 
 disease, because of the reason I gave you before, but 
 I knew I could cure him if he were willing to pay 
 the penalty and to endure the privations that must 
 come. I said to him that " Life under such condi- 
 tions is not worth living," and he moaned bitterly, 
 " No, indeed." 
 
 My friend was willing to do all that was neces- 
 sary, except to give up his pipe and tobacco ; it was 
 very nearly "Good-bye, eyes" Life is hardly 
 worth living to some men if they can't smoke and 
 drink ; yet life is sweet and pleasant unto each when 
 it comes to a clinch. Said I, " You can't get better 
 if you smoke and drink " Said he, " It's all very well 
 for you to talk, but you can't realise how much it 
 means to me." Then remembered I a great man, 
 whose name was Paul, who, on a certain time, said : 
 " Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I 
 will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make 
 my brother to offend." That seemed a high standard 
 to reach to ; but I said, " Friend, if you will give it 
 all up, I will also." Then he looked me straight in 
 the eye, and, after a brief pause, he took my hand 
 and said, " So be it." And now I'm just thinking 
 what a fool I've been through the weary years. I 
 had no idea that there was so much pleasure to be 
 had out of a simple Pauline act. I smoked too much 
 to be good for me. You could hardly see across my 
 office sometimes for smoke. Now I'm saying to 
 myself
 
 The Slave of the Pipe 51 
 
 "Tobacco is a noxious weed, 
 It was the devil sowed the seed ; 
 It drains the pocket, soils the clothes, 
 And makes a chimney of the nose." 
 
 My opinion is that it's easier to give up both 
 smoking and drinking rather than one of them. I 
 know a man in the bush who goes to town and says, 
 " Now I'm going to keep straight ; only two whiskies 
 to-day." But the first whisky weakens his resolution, 
 and the second washes it all away, and when he gets 
 home he sees two trees where only one grows. A 
 man who does a thing like that over and over again 
 has less sense than a horse, or a dingo, but there's a 
 lot of men keep on at it. fSome of us can take arefresher 
 at times, and leave it alone when it's likely to get to 
 be the boss ; but a chap who can't do that should 
 give it best entirely. That's why I think the only 
 safe way is to chuck it altogether. But if you hang 
 on to smoking you must have a drink at least, most 
 of us must, and if you hang on to whisky you're sure 
 to smoke if you know the way, so if you're going to 
 reform you've got to do it solidly. 
 
 Did you ever hear of a boy whistling as he 
 walked down a dark road at night to keep the ghosts 
 away 1 Well, I expect that's me ! I'm trying to 
 screw up my courage to stand by what I know is the 
 right thing. But I'm a poor, weak sinner, and I've 
 written this to pin my resolutions down and take you 
 into my confidence, gossips, dear. Will any of you 
 boys come and join me ? Will you chip in and hold 
 my hand while I walk without a smoke, or a " nip," 
 eh 1 I would not say this only I've found out that 
 so many of you are human and kindly and helpiul, 
 and I want to do the square thing myself. What do 
 you say ? 
 
 " Of your gladness lend a gleam 
 
 Unto souls that shiver ; 
 
 Show them how dark sorrow's stream 
 
 Blends with hope's bright river."
 
 52 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 Grandfather's 
 
 sat on the Lookout at Katoomba, talking 
 about fat stock, for men will talk about 
 their business even on the steps of the 
 altar. When the glory of the scenery 
 finally overcame the market prices, we sat gazing on 
 the mystic blue haze of the lone mountain ; on the 
 panorama of hills rolling away to the sky line where 
 the blue of the earth and the blue of the sky became 
 one. I said to Steve, "What makes these mountains 
 so blue ? " He said, " Oh, it's an atmospheric effect 
 due to the extreme tenuity of the ail*," and he was 
 satisfied. He had covered his ignorance with a brave 
 show of words, and felt as if he had explained things ! 
 Over at the Ruined Castle, on the other side of the 
 valley, there were miners lying on their sides, in long, 
 low, dark passages, cutting out blocks of kerosene 
 shale for a pitiful little wage. I asked Steve what 
 kerosene shale was, and he gave it up. Nobody 
 knows what it is, nor how it came to be where it is, 
 but men like Steve can explain all about the blue 
 haze. Why miners should have to work in such 
 soul-destroying dirt and darkness for starvation wages, 
 in the midst of the blue haze, is the kind of a problem 
 men like Steve can never solve. 
 
 When we got back to the weatherboard shanty 
 that we lived in at Katoomba, we found Steve's father 
 moaning helplessly on the little bed on the inside 
 room, where he had lain this many a day. He was 
 only 70 years old, but he was dying of old age. Poor 
 old soul, he had led a hard life in his early days in 
 New South Wales, and he was worn out at seventy. 
 As he lay moaning softly in the still afternoon, little 
 Steve, his grandson, came creeping softly up to me 
 with a picture book in his hand. I opened the book,
 
 Grandfather's Clock. 53 
 
 and looked at the pictures of the Ark, and of utterly 
 impossible, gorgeously-coloured Shems, Hams and 
 Japhets, and then, somehow, got to teaching little Steve 
 his alphabet. The old man lay softly moaning out 
 his life, finished with all its turmoils, weary of all its 
 joys, and here was his grandson just beginning life, 
 but not one whit wiser for the old man's deep 
 experiences. The grandfather's struggles, groans, tears 
 and triumphs were as nothing to the small boy. He 
 would die and take his knowledge to the grave, and 
 the child would have to begin life for himself, even 
 as he was now learning his letters. 
 
 That night the old man died, very quietly, just 
 as poor men have learned to die I have stood at 
 the side of men dying, in all lands and climes, on sea 
 and shore, in calm and storm ; they have died of 
 cholera and consumption, of yellow fever and senile 
 decay ; but, somehow, I've never seen any fuss about 
 it ; they go out into the dark very quietly. The fuss 
 is made by the fools about them. When the crowd 
 came to the funeral they looked sad and sympathetic, 
 and they behaved themselves very respectfully, and 
 when the hearse we had a hearse moved off down 
 the bush road to the far-away cemetery, they looked 
 liked a lot of patient, ignorant plodders who had 
 listened respectfully enough to the parson, but still 
 felt unsettled in their minds, like 
 
 " Poor pitiful pagans, who didn't know 
 
 When they came to die where their souls would go." 
 
 When Steve came back from the funeral he told 
 us where the old man had gone to. Heaven was like 
 the blue haze on the mountains. It was all clear to 
 Steve. No astronomical difficulties troubled him. 
 Heaven was " up there." When his father's father 
 had died in England he went " up there " ; but he 
 went in the opposite direction to the old man who 
 died in the Blue Mountains, for he lived at the other 
 aide of the world, and the world is round, so if they 
 both went up where would they meet ? You know
 
 54 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 all about it till you begin to think about it. Steve 
 thought he knew all about it, but, then, he didn't 
 think about it. He " believed." 
 
 The day after the funeral there was a terrible 
 hailstorm, and the ground was fairly covered with 
 the icy bullets. It stormed all day long, and the 
 children of the house said, " Can't you make grand- 
 father's clock go?" It was a queer little, old- 
 fashioned clock in an iron case, that stood on the 
 mantle shelf. The old man used to oil and dust it, 
 and wind it up, and fool with it for years before his 
 death, but it hadn't been going for many a day. I 
 said I'd try, as I was stormbound ; but I didn't know 
 any more about clocks jthan Steve knew about 
 the blue haze, or about heaven ; but, then, I knew I 
 didn't know, and Steve didn't know that he didn't 
 know, and that was the difference. 
 
 I took the clock down, took off the face, 
 unhooked the pendulum, and lifted the works out of 
 the case ; that was easy ! Then I loosened it all, 
 but if I had taken it to pieces 1 could never have put 
 it together again. After oiling it all, and shaking it 
 a good deal, I screwed it up, returned the works to 
 the case, put the face on again, and wound it up ; 
 but it wouldn't go. I took it out again, examined it 
 closely, and found that one brass plate had been 
 screwed up on the wrong side of another brass plate, 
 so I started to loosen the blessed thing to get those 
 pieces into their proper place and all the while the 
 children watched me with anxious eyes. They 
 thought I was clever, and I tried to look so. The 
 clock was loosening beautifully, and I could almost 
 get the two brass pieces into their right places 
 another shake and another pull would do it when, 
 WHIRR ! there was a wild, blood-curdling shaking in 
 my hand, and the blessed clock seemed to fly into a 
 million pieces ! The spring had been wound up since 
 I had put the confounded thing together, and that 
 had unwound itself with diabolic glee, and had 
 jumped out of my hands with a kind of quivering
 
 Grandfather's Clock. 55 
 
 mirth, and rolled away under the sofa. I never 
 moved a muscle, but tried to look as though clocks 
 always acted that way. Then the little ones gathered 
 up the fragments, and kept bringing me more wheels 
 and more wheels, till it seemed that the accursed 
 clock was like the man whom the murderers cut up 
 to carry away. They said they had no idea there 
 was so much of a mail ! I put the clock together, 
 but, when screwed into the case, I had five wheels 
 too many, so I dropped them into the case, and said 
 it was probably out of order, and that was why it 
 had not gone for a long time. Next morning I took 
 the train for Sydney, but that clock has taught me a 
 lesson ! Steve knows as much about heaven and the 
 blue haze as I know about clocks ; and, when you 
 come to think about it, nobody knows much about 
 anything after all, and the wisest man is, perhaps, 
 the man who knows that he doesn't know much. 
 
 X 
 
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 RELIABLE TAILORING X 
 
 and Most Stylish Assortment 
 
 of Materials. 
 
 THOMSON, GATES & GO 
 
 185 PITT STREET, 
 
 (2 doors off King St.) 
 Also for every description of 
 
 UNDERWEAR PYJAMAS UMBRELLAS 
 
 HATS & CAPS NECK TIES WATERPROOF COATS 
 
 WASHING VESTS. 
 Every Variety Shirts by Best Makers also to order. 
 
 fjgT" PATTERNS and Price Lists sent Free on Appli- 
 cation, with Fashion Plates and easy Measure Forms.
 
 56 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 /ftea-K 
 
 the Book of Leviticus it is written that " The 
 blood is the life of all flesh ; the blood of it is 
 for the life thereof ; therefore, I say unto the 
 children of Israel, ye shall eat the blood of no 
 manner of flesh ; for the life of all flesh is the blood 
 thereof; whosoever eateth it shall be cut off" 
 Strange it seems to visit Glebe Island Abbatoirs and 
 watch the working out of that old commandment in 
 the nineteenth century amongst the Hebrew people. 
 The odd part of it lies in the fact that modern science 
 is fast bringing us to the position occupied by Moses 
 thousands of years ago. We stole the religion of the 
 Jews, improved (?) on it, and killed the Jews for not 
 accepting our improvements, for if we accept the 
 Mosaic theory about killing cattle, in this enlightened 
 age, then we may as well admit that the Jews are not 
 altogether fools Moses was the clearest headed man of 
 his age, and we have not yet fully realised how clever 
 he was. He belongs to that small class 
 
 " Who stamped the tiigiiet of their souls &o deep 
 In art or action, and whose memories keep 
 Their height like stars above our misty ways." 
 
 Moses affirmed that it was bad to eat beasts 
 which had not been bled. To that we all agree, but 
 our butchers stun the cattle with a blow, or else pith 
 them in the vertebral column, in such a way that a 
 sudden change is set up in the blood by the cessation 
 of the heart's action. The Jew, at Glebe Island in 
 the month of May, 1894, lives up to the law of 
 Moses, and refuses to have his beasts killed in that 
 way. Every joint that goes to a good Jew's table 
 must come from a beast that has been properly bled. 
 So the Jew butcher is not a simple tradesman, 
 selected from the ranks by advertisement or favoritism
 
 Kosher Meat. 57 
 
 he is the Shochet, appointed by the chief Rabbi of 
 England for the service of the sons of Abraham in 
 Australia. The business of this Shochet, or killer, 
 Mr. P. N. Philipstein, is to inspect the cattle for 
 Hebrew use, to kill them, to inspect them after 
 killing, and to stamp all meat that passes his 
 inspection with the stamp of his office " Kosher 
 right. 
 
 THE " KOSHER MARK. 
 
 This stamp signifies several things. It means, 
 first, that the meat is healthy, with no sign of disease 
 about it. The Shochet will not pass a sheep with the 
 slightest sign of "liver fluke" about it. He will not 
 pass a cow or calf with the faintest trace of tubercu- 
 losis about it. The meat must be, like Caesar's wife, 
 above the shadow of suspicion before the " Kosher " 
 stamp is placed upon it. The mark on the beast 
 signifies, too, that it has been properly bled according 
 to the old Hebrew fashion, and that whoever eats it 
 does not eat with it the blood " which is the life 
 thereof." Strange it seems that this custom of the 
 Hebrew people should have endured longer than any 
 kingdom on earth. Noble nations have slowly risen, 
 reached their prime, and slowly perished, but the 
 custom of the Hebrew Shochet has failed never. 
 The Jews have been the most sincerely hated and 
 most bitterly persecuted race on earth, and have been
 
 58 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 hunted like beasts through long ages, but they still 
 cling to their " Kosher " meat, and the reason is not 
 far to seek. A great teacher has said that " No 
 reform is worth its cost which is not important enough 
 to rise to the level of a religious duty. Make it that 
 to the consciences of men, and it will live ; make it 
 less than that, and men will play with it for a day, 
 but will never build it into anything that will live 
 for future ages." The Jews made the killing of 
 beasts part of their religion, and a good system has 
 endured from Sinai to Glebe Island, and that is a 
 good stretch ! 
 
 The Shochet of to-day is provided with excellent 
 tools. He carries his long-bladed, razor-like knives 
 in handsome cases. They are the implements for a 
 religious service, not the tools of an artisan. He 
 takes a becoming pride in his duties, and he has a 
 right to do so. If we are justified in being proud of 
 a piratical grandfather, who enriched the family by 
 proceedings which will not bear investigation, surely 
 the Shochet may well be proud of his trade, which 
 was founded by Sinaitic thunders when the world 
 was young. 
 
 When a beast, say a calf, has been approved of 
 by the Shochet, it is secured round one leg by a rope, 
 and a pulley raises the ill-fated animal off the ground 
 by the one limb. Another leg is secured, the beast's 
 head is bent back generally by a Christian and 
 the sharp knife of the Shochet does the rest ; and if 
 the Christian world could look on the sight would 
 shock it. The blood, certainly, escapes through the 
 gaping aperture, and the Mosaic law is strictly 
 adhered to. We apologise for intruding this ghastly 
 business on our gentle readers all readers are 
 " gentle " but we may be excused for recalling that 
 exquisite little French story about a butcher : A 
 lady said to him, in horrified tones, " Oh, dear, yours 
 is a very dreadful business killing the poor little 
 lambs." Whereat the simple butcher, in great 
 surprise, ejaculated, " Bless me, madame, do you want
 
 Kosher Meat. 59 
 
 to eat the little lambs alive ? " We may shut our 
 eyes to the slaughtering business as long as we eat 
 meat ; but, unless we " eat the little lambs alive," or 
 take to vegetables, it must be done. 
 
 After the beast is properly dressed by the 
 butchers, the Shochet examines it carefully, and if 
 there is anything suspicious about the carcase, it goes 
 to the Christians. We have no religious scruples 
 about our beef or mutton, and so we can afford to 
 eat what the Jew would reject. If we rejected all 
 that the Shochet rejects, we would never enjoy a 
 pork chop or a rasher of bacon, so we may be allowed 
 to cling to our own ways. If the beef, or mutton, or 
 veal passes the Shochet, he stamps it all over. You 
 could not cut a joint from a beast without a stamp 
 upon it ; you could not cut a chop from a sheep 
 without part of a stamp upon it, so that the Hebrew 
 knows, when he buys a joint of meat, that it is 
 " Kosher " right, that it is healthy meat, and has 
 been bled in Mosaic fashion. 
 
 This mark is made with a vegetable compound, 
 and is perfectly innocuous and enduring. The beef 
 may be corned or salted, but when it comes out of the 
 pickle, there is the " Kosher " mark still upon it, so 
 that there is no trickery possible in the " Kosher " 
 meat trade. Now comes the little joke. The Jews 
 buy their " Kosher " meat mostly at Buttel's, in Pitt- 
 street, who are not Jews, but they are good butchers. 
 The atmosphere round our beautiful harbour has a 
 corroding effect on most religions (except picnicking), 
 and many of the Jews have given up " Kosher " 
 meat, and use the ordinary beef of commerce, the 
 common sort that we eat ourselves. This spoils the 
 trade, because unless all the Hebrews eat the specially 
 prepared meat, there is no trade for a " Kosher " 
 shop. But there is a law of compensation at work, 
 for many Christians, especially medical men, will 
 have nothing else but "Kosher" meat; so that, in 
 spite of Hebrew defections, the butchers do a good 
 trade, and the marked meat is always on sale. So
 
 60 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 do things change ! The larger liberty the Jews 
 enjoy is loosening the old bonds, and they are eating 
 of luscious Christian meat, in spite of Sinaitic 
 thunders. The Christian hatred of the Jew is in 
 New South Wales at least a thing of the past, and 
 so the Christian is eating Jewish meat, and we are 
 gradually drawing nearer to each other, but we may 
 adopt the Hebraic institution of the Shochet with 
 much benefit to our system, and the Jews may, with 
 equal advantage, come to partake of many of our 
 Christian dishes now forbidden to them, because, in 
 spite of ancient ordinance, they are really " Kosher."
 
 The Consumption Horror, 61 
 
 Jhe Coqsurqptien pepper. 
 
 JORE than 3,000 human beings die every 
 year in Australia from consumption ! 
 No brilliantly-illuminated horror could 
 possibly be more appalling than the bald, 
 simple statement. It should be written in letters of 
 fire across the portal of every church, meeting-house, 
 and business place in the land. Men ought to under- 
 stand the full horror of the proposition, and then, 
 perhaps, we would take some strong measures to 
 stamp out the disease, for it can be stamped out, now 
 that we know what it is and how it is caused, nursed, 
 developed and disseminated : but we never seem to 
 wake up to the facts of the case. When the 
 " Victoria " goes down, and 500 lives are lost, all the 
 world thrills with horror. When a thousand soldiers 
 lay dead on the battlefield, every kindly-hearted 
 human being shudders at the slaughter ; but more 
 than 3,000 people die every year in Australia from 
 this insidious, accursed and preventible disease In 
 our lovely climate, with all our bright sunshine and 
 pure air, we sit down with folded hands before this 
 awful disease, and yet we count ourselves wise ! 
 
 We are not wise we are fools and blind, or we 
 would cease from our self-glorifications and our 
 scrambling after wealth, and we would save the 
 perishing ones about us ; we would make life better 
 and sweeter for all, and try to live to the poet's ideal, 
 and 
 
 " Work for the good that is Tightest, 
 
 Dream not of greatness afar ; 
 See that glory is ever the brightest, 
 Which shines upon men as they are.' 1 
 
 Consumption is not transmitted from sire to son ; 
 it is not inherited, it is not hereditary. It is not
 
 62 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 born with a child any more than cholera or yellow 
 fever, or even toothache. We catch consumption as 
 we catch other infectious diseases, and if we devoted 
 one small tithe of the time and money to stamping 
 out consumption that we spend on ironclads and 
 implements of murder, we could soon stamp it out 
 But we wise Christian people, who have been busy 
 fighting for Gospel truths for nineteen hundred years, 
 are yet a long way from that eternal truth which will 
 make earth into heaven. 
 
 Consumption is caused by a tiny, rod-like worm, 
 which plays on the vital tissues, which lives on the 
 tender, succulent food stuff of the lungs, or in the 
 throat, or wherever else it can find a lodgment. Dr. 
 Koch, the great German, investigated the subject 
 thorough y, and showed jut>t what the disease was 
 He took a colony of the tiny parasites from a tubercle 
 in a diseased human lung, and he transferred them to 
 prepared artificial food. He watched them reproduce 
 of their kind, in response to the law of merciless old 
 Dame Nature, who is as kind to the germs of a 
 deadly disease as she is to the sheep on a waterless 
 plain, as she is to the tenderest soul that ever 
 breathed a prayer. The scientific man removed a 
 new generation of germs to fresh food ; then, when 
 they had produced a new colony, he founded a fresh 
 colony, and so on for ten generations. Then he took 
 some of the artificially-raised germs, ten generations 
 distant from a diseased lung, and he inoculated living 
 animals, guinea pigs and other helpless forms, and lo ! 
 they died of consumption. This is the working of 
 the mysterious power which falters never 
 
 " It slayeth and it saveth. nowise moved 
 Except to the working out of doom ; 
 
 Its threads are love and life, and death and pain 
 The shuttles of its loom." 
 
 The red worm is consumption. The bright eye, 
 the hectic cheek, the gasping breath, the failing life, 
 these are the outward and visible signs of the 
 destruction of vital tissues by the red worm. When
 
 The Consumption Horror. 63 
 
 a man comes of weak parents, who were cursed with 
 delicate tissues, let him beware. When a man 
 drinks and abuses his frame with excess, then he is 
 undermining the constitution of the children yet 
 unborn, for no man can suffer to himself alone. 
 When a man with weak lungs catches cold, and the 
 delicate lung stuff becomes abraded, he meets a gust 
 of wind in George-street, or at Flemington market, 
 and an organic " dust speck " finds a lodgment in his 
 throat. It is a living speck, a dried, dessicated red 
 worm, driven by the wind, seeking a spot to germi- 
 nate, and it finds the required spot in the healthy 
 lung that is abraded by a " bad cold," and in the 
 course of a few months, or it may be years, the 
 doctors declare that the man has consumption. It is 
 a " visitation of Providence," perhaps, and at the 
 funeral the minister says, " The Lord giveth and the 
 Lord taketh away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 We blame the Lord, or we blame the law, according 
 to our mental bias, but we ought to blame the 
 criminal folly of a gold-cursed, civilisation-maddened 
 race. But Nature revenges herself on us by stealing 
 our darlings, and bringing sorrow and gloom to once 
 bright and happy homes 
 
 ' ' She will not be contemned of anyone, 
 Who thwarts her, loses, and who serves her gains ; 
 
 The hidden good she pays with peace and bliss, 
 The hidden ill with pains." 
 
 When you visit the Thirlmere Home for con- 
 sumptives to which you ought to subscribe you 
 will find that every patient carries a box in his 
 pocket, into which he must spit. No consumptive is 
 allowed to expectorate about the house or the 
 grounds, because there are cows and sheep and dogs 
 about the place, and the red worms are in the sputen 
 of the patients. The people about the Home know 
 that if the patients were to spit about the place, the 
 cattle would soon die ; they know that such a " visi- 
 tation " would not be the " visitation of God," but a 
 deserved retribution for human carelessness. When
 
 64 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 a doctor suspects a patient of consumption, he has 
 some of the saliva the sputen of the sick one 
 collected, and he sends it to a bacteriologist or 
 microscopist, who examines the matter under the 
 keen eye of his powerful instrument. We sit round 
 in the laboratory and wait for the verdict. When 
 the scrutineer at last says, " Yes, here's the bacilli," 
 we feel sorry, because, although we don't kiunv tln> 
 patient we only know the doctor's name and the 
 number on the bottle we know that somebody has 
 been sentenced to death, somebody's darling perhaps 
 the only one and we are sorry for the unknown 
 victim. When people are under sentence of death 
 from consumption, it takes great care and great sense 
 to gain a reprieve. It's an awful disease. 
 
 We know the facts connected with it now. We 
 know that consumptives are dangerous to all people 
 with weak lungs or " bad colds," but because the 
 disease is less forceful than cholera, less malignant 
 than small-pox, and less sudden than diphtheria, we 
 take no measures against it ; yet it is far more deadly 
 than all these put together ! We allow consumptives 
 to come to our shores from England ; we allow con- 
 sumptives to walk our streets, and to expectorate 
 in our trams, our offices and shops. The hot sun 
 dries the sputen ; the wild southerly buster takes up 
 the dessicated germs, and whirls them through all the 
 city streets, into delicate lungs and sensitive throats, 
 and more than 3,000 die in our fair land every year 
 because of our blind, criminal, maudlin folly. We 
 will not dare to look the matter in the face, and so 
 we perish, and blame God for our sufferings. Fools 
 that we are ! 
 
 As with human beings, so with cattle. A cor- 
 respondent has been enquiring if the disease is 
 infectious or contagious. This is the answer. Here 
 is the story. A healthy man or a healthy beast might 
 eat the germs of consumption every hour of the day, 
 and come to no harm, but when the weak one comes, 
 or the weak hour, then comes the stealthy disease
 
 The Consumption Horror. 65 
 
 which plays such havoc with men and beasts. Tuber- 
 colosis in man is the same as in cattle, and we will 
 never stamp out the disease in our beasts till we have 
 stamped it out in human beings ; but we ought to 
 exercise great care over our dumb beasts, and kill 
 them the moment we are certain they have tubercu- 
 losis. But what man or men will have the courage 
 to take up this awful question ? The sinful rulers 
 who permit 3,000 human beings to die from consump- 
 tion every year in Australia shriek fearsomely at the 
 graziers and squatters who permit consumption in 
 theit herds, but who will take up the sword against 
 our rulers, against this awful disease 1 Nature would 
 not curse us, cursed we not ovrselves. We are the 
 arbiters of our own destiny, for we can all believe 
 that that force which rules the world is not a 
 malevolent one, and most of us believe, with a great 
 and wise one, that 
 
 "Before beginning, and without our end, 
 As space eternal and as surety sure, 
 
 Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good, 
 Only its laws endure."
 
 66 Australian Gosstfi and Story 
 
 Pertur\e Jelling. 
 
 jHEN Major Mitchell was exploring the 
 Wellington Caves in 1838 he found some 
 curious bones. He had never seen the 
 like of them in his life, and he was clever 
 enough to know that they were strangers to Australia. 
 He shipped them off to Professor Owen, the great 
 student of paleontology, and the results were peculiar. 
 The great scholar took one big jawbone and studied 
 it carefully, so that he could make out what other 
 bones were required to fix it up into a perfect animal. 
 When he had finished he had built up a beast 
 theoretically such as no mortal man had ever seen 
 on earth. It was not an elephant, nor a kangaroo, 
 nor a rhinocerous, but it was like them all. It was 
 a beast about nine feet long, seven feet high, that 
 lived on vegetable stuff, and brought forth its young 
 as a kangaroo does. It was a giant marsupialian, 
 and he called it " Diprotodon Australis." Un- 
 believers laughed, because it was new to them, and 
 impossible-looking, but the old man knew his scientific 
 deductions were correct. 
 
 Watch a clever sheepbreeder at a pen, and he 
 will pick out the kind of sheep he wants, and pay 
 big prices for them, while an amateur fails to see 
 where the value is. Every man to his business. The 
 scientific man will tell you the history of a beast if 
 you show him a section of its tooth. The scientific 
 breeder will tell you the history of a beast by looking 
 at its mouth. 
 
 Years passed away after Mitchell's discovery, 
 and other men found other txmes buried in the earth 
 or hidden in caves, until we had all the bones of the 
 " Diprotodon " gathered together, and built them up 
 into the very shape that Professor Owen had sketched
 
 Fortune Telling, 67 
 
 from a single bone. That is science ! I had the 
 pleasure of measuring the skeleton of one of these 
 monsters myself in the Sydney Museum There was 
 no mistake about it. Now we know that once, in 
 the history of Australia, long before rani fairs were 
 invented, or " labour members," or " unemployed," 
 that there were vast multitudes of these monsters 
 living in our country. We know that. It is not a 
 surmise, or a guess, or a perhaps. It was so ! 
 
 Professor Owen worked out his theories on a 
 simple, scientific basis, called the law of homologous 
 growth, and that is a law that we work on every day, 
 but we don't know it. Go into a store in the back 
 blocks and watch a station hand buying a pair of 
 trousers He doesn't know how long his own leg is, in 
 inches, but he takes hold of the trousers by the 
 bottoms and stretches them out across his breast, 
 with his arms extended. If he can just stretch the 
 trousers out at full length, they will fit him. Why 1 
 Because he is built on the same plan as the " Dipro- 
 todon," and his arms and legs are in certain definite 
 relationships to each other. 
 
 A New Zealand sheepbreeder ran out of collars 
 the other day, and went into a Sydney store to buy 
 some. The assistant said 
 
 " What size do you wear ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 The assistant took up a piece of twine that lay 
 on the counter, and measured the New Zealauder's 
 ivrist, not his neck. Then he doubled the string and 
 said, " Twice round the wrist is once round the neck ; 
 that is the size you want, sir." And it was ! The 
 New Zealander and the " Diprotodon " were built on 
 the same lines. The Apostle Paul said that " God 
 hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell 
 together upon all the face of the earth." We know 
 to day that God hath made of one blood, and on one 
 plan, all the livings things that creep and crawl and 
 fly and cheat and love and laugh and live en this old 
 mud-ball of ours. We are made on the same plan as
 
 68 Australian Gossip and 
 
 the jackass and the kookaburra, the longwool sheep 
 and the merino ; we are brethren all, though some of 
 us despise our poor relations. You can tell the size 
 of a woman's foot by the size of her hand ; and you 
 can measure every organ of her body by some other 
 organ. If a woman is knitting a pair of stockings 
 for her husband, she never asks him to try them on 
 when she comes to the " narrowings " not a bit of 
 it. She makes him shut his fist, and she wraps the 
 foot of the stocking round that to get the measure of 
 his pedal extremity. That is because her husband 
 is related to a u Diprotodon." We work on exactly 
 the same rule as Professor Owen, but we don't know 
 it. 
 
 Now, what has all this got to do with " fortune 
 telling ? " It has everything to do with it ! If you 
 will look round Sydney now you will find that we are 
 swarming with "palmists," "fortune tellers," "astro- 
 logers," " necromancers," and all manner of people, 
 who dip into the future for you for a shilling, a half- 
 crown, or as much more as they can get. New 
 Zealand has been raiding them and punishing them, 
 and so will we after a while But the question arises, 
 " Are they all frauds ? " Not a bit of it ! Fortune 
 telling is pure, unmitigated humbug ! Fortune 
 telling is a fraud a downright, unmitigated fraud, 
 but character reading is possible, on Professor 
 Owen's basis, because we are all relatives of the 
 " Diprotodon." If you can tell what a man is, you 
 can tell what he will do, and what he is likely to do. 
 There are men in the stock trade in Sydney that I 
 would go to if I was hard up and ask for their 
 assistance, and be sure of getting it, and getting it 
 with no grudging hand. There are other men, good 
 men in their way, that I would sooner die than ask a 
 favour from. You can tell by a man's face what he 
 is ; and how 1 The best men are not the handsomest, 
 though I believe that good people are good-looking. 
 But there is something in a man's looks, or in his air, 
 that tells you what he is, and no man is good or bad
 
 Fortune Telling 69 
 
 by accident ; he is what he is, because he was born 
 so ; and he is what he is, because of something he 
 had nothing to do with. George Eliot says 
 
 " Our deeds still travel with us from afar, 
 And what we have been makes us what we are." 
 
 What our fathers and mothers were makes us what 
 we are, and what our unknown, remote ancestors 
 were makes us what we are also. A man is a queer, 
 animated sack of emotions, a child of accidents, and 
 occult incidents, such as should make us very tendei 
 in our judgments concerning our neighbours. Now, 
 if you can read a man's character from his face, or 
 his manner, or his general make-up, then you can tell 
 what he is likely to do in the future, and what he 
 has probably been able to do in the past. In addi- 
 tion to that, there is also that awful, cruel, merciless 
 law, which is written in letters of fire across the 
 earth's history " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
 shall he also reap," which is widened, deepened and 
 embittered by that other fearsome statement, that 
 " The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, 
 even unto the third and fourth generation." You 
 may fool a parson, or a lawyer, but you can't fool 
 Nature ; you may even fool your wife, but the .aws 
 of the universe will not be trifled with. Behind all 
 these things lies the big delusion known as " Fortune 
 Telling." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 This is the best and loveliest world that any of 
 us ever saw, and, if all tales are true, it is the best 
 that any of us ever will see ; but, for all that, most 
 of us go through the world blind to its beauty. We 
 are like the sinners of old, who had eyes, but saw not, 
 and ears, but heard not. Some of us have our eyes 
 full of fat stock, and some are deafened by the clink 
 of golden counters
 
 70 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 " An idle poet here and there, 
 
 Looks round him, but for all the rest, 
 The world, anfathomably fair, 
 Is duller than a witling's jest." 
 
 Some of us catch a glimpse of glory once in a 
 while, or hear the moving of mysterious things, but, 
 taking us for all in all, we are a stolid and stupid 
 race, marching on from the cradle to the grave with 
 no care for the lovely or glorious things about us. 
 
 At the recent ram fair we had men visiting us from 
 many far places, and they were but buyers or sellers, 
 mere items in the ledger so many sheep, so many men, 
 so many sovereigns. But we stood close to them for a 
 few days, and were startled to find that they were 
 human beings, with hearts and homes, and hopes and 
 fears, and aches and pains, just like ourselves. One 
 of these men went with a well-known Sydney ite to a 
 palmist's and had his " fortune " told, and the palmist 
 read wonderful things from out his hand. If I dared 
 to write the names of the two men, it would startle 
 my readers, but I may not name them ; let it suffice 
 to say that they were real men, and well-known men 
 in the circles of those interested in stock. Is there 
 anything in fortune telling 1 Yea, verily there is ! 
 
 Whenever a delusion or an idea has prevailed 
 throughout all the world for thousands and thousands 
 of years, there is something of truth in it, something 
 of real worth. No great delusion that is all a 
 delusion can endure for long. The salt of truth 
 must be there if the error is to be preserved. Shakes- 
 peare says that we 
 
 " Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 We, who are not Shakespeares, are too apt to 
 condemn what we cannot understand. Now, let me 
 repeat a remark. Fortune telling is pure, unmiti- 
 gated humbug ! And let me add, also, that fortune 
 telling from character is true ! We meet men every 
 day who have scarcely got character enough to go to 
 the devil, and we meet men every day who are strong,
 
 Fortune Telhng. 71 
 
 masterful and imperious. We can read their 
 characters, though we don't know how. We all 
 believe that a woman has keen intuitions ; but so 
 have children and dogs, and of him whom dogs and 
 children dislike, do thou beware ! Trust a woman, a 
 dog, and a child ! 
 
 How long has fortune telling endured ? How 
 long has the world endured ? How long have men 
 suffered, groaned, hoped and aspired ? So long has 
 fortune telling endured ! Get that Bible out of your 
 book-case, my worthy stock agent, and look up the 
 40th chapter of Genesis, and you will find there a 
 yarn about a respectable fortune teller that will 
 make you take off your hat to the profession of the 
 palmist. A young man named Joseph was in quod, 
 and amongst his fellow-prisoners were the king's 
 butler and the king's baker. They each had a 
 dream, and Joseph read their dreams for them he 
 told their fortunes ! To the butler Joseph said : 
 " In three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head and 
 restore thee unto thy place, and thou shalt deliver 
 Pharaoh's cup into his hand after the former manner 
 when thou wast his butler. But think on me when 
 it shall be well with thee, and show kindness, I pray 
 thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto 
 Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house." Joseph 
 was no fool, whatever Potiphar's wife might have 
 thought ! 
 
 When it came to the baker's turn to get his 
 dream read, Joseph told him that " Within three 
 days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head from off thee, 
 and shall hang thee on a tree, and the birds shall eat 
 thy flesh from off thee." And it came to pass just as 
 the virtuous fortune teller had said. You know the 
 rest ! Pharaoh himself had a dream, and Joseph was 
 brought out and read it, and became the boss of all 
 Egypt and there were no flies on him in that day ! 
 Do you wonder at the flock-master going to a Sydney 
 arcade to get his fortune told after that ? There's a 
 good deal in fortune telling, and, if properly done, it
 
 72 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 can be relied on every time. Joseph was a good 
 judge, and it's no use anybody setting up for a fortune 
 teller unless they are good at reading character and 
 talking double. That is, they must be able to talk 
 as mysteriously as the Delphic Oracle, so that, 
 whatever comes to pass, they may be right. 
 
 But how can you read a character from the 
 hand 1 A man is built on scientific lines, for the 
 Builder of the universe is scientific. A fellow student 
 of mine, a devout young mathematician, when he saw 
 the wonderful frosr crystals on the window in a 
 winter's morning, used to gasp out, in tones of 
 deepest admiration, " God is a wonderful mathemati- 
 cian." He who trusts in God, and in God's ways, 
 will never err. All men are built on one plan, and 
 every characteristic of the individual is told in every 
 part of his body. Some make a study of heads, and, 
 by phrenology, read character; some study faces, 
 and, by physiognomy, come to understand the nature 
 of the being. The ears have recently been the 
 subject of much study, and it will startle the densest 
 sceptic to see how much character there is in ears. 
 In Moslem countries the people take off their shoes 
 where we take off our hats, and they leave them at 
 the door of the Mosque, or the house, and they make 
 a strange study. You can look at the row of shoes 
 and slippers at the door of a Turkish mosque and 
 read the character of the wearers. There is character 
 in shoes, in gloves, in hair, in handwriting, in voices, 
 and in a knock at the door. 
 
 Ask a wife if she knows her husband's step in 
 the street. Ask a girl if she knows her sweetheart's 
 knock at the door. Ask an auctioneer if he knows 
 his buyers in a crowd. The Chinese don't photograph 
 their criminals they make them leave the impress of 
 their thumbs on a sheet of rice-paper, and that can 
 never be mistaken for anybody else's signature. Try 
 it some night in your pleasant drawing-room. Get 
 everybody to leave the imprint of the ball of the 
 thumb on a sheet of white paper, and see how widely
 
 Fortune Telling. 73 
 
 they differ. Character is written all over us, and 
 you can tell what a man is likely to be by what he 
 is and what he thinks, and "Whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap." 
 
 A man is as he thinks. The central thought of 
 the Cartesian philosophy is cogito ergo sum, or, in 
 English, I think, therefore, I am, or, as we liberally 
 render it, I am what I think. You watch a larrikin 
 swinging along George-street with his " donah," and 
 you will see his thoughts expressed in his walk. 
 What a man thinks is expressed in his hand-shake, 
 because what he is is written in his hand. Study 
 the hands of the men about you, and you will soon 
 see that every hand is different, unmistakably dif- 
 ferent, and the character is written in it, and he who 
 studies hands can read characters, and he who can 
 read characters can tell " fortunes." We never 
 expect to gather figs from thistles, nor do we expect 
 bad men to do good things, nor small-souled men to 
 do great things. The character reader who can put 
 two and two together can tell " fortunes " from hands, 
 on a purely scientific basis, but no mortal man can 
 lift the curtain of the morrow and tell aught save 
 what might be. If any man declare aught else, he is 
 a liar, and the truth is not in him. 
 
 CHAPTER III, 
 
 Blessed is the man who can laugh with the 
 children, and remember not the years that weigh 
 upon his head. Happy is he who can sing often 
 
 " Turn back, oh, turn back, old Time, in your flight, 
 And make me a child again just for to-night." 
 
 If a man can shut his eyes to the mean things of 
 life, and look only upon its pleasant side, then blessed 
 is he indeed. The child that watches the transfor- 
 mation scene at the pantomime, and dreams not of
 
 74 Australian Gossip and Story t 
 
 the pulleys and dirt and grit behind the scenes, is 
 happier than the man who knows how the " wheels 
 go round." It is a bad thing to lose sight of the 
 poetry of life, but when one sees the fraud and 
 trickery practised by " fortune tellers " it makes the 
 blood boU, for fools are always being swindled by it. 
 Here is how it is worked, and it may be taken as a 
 fair sample of how it can be done. 
 
 When I was younger than I am now (please 
 excuse the autobiographical excursion), I landed in a 
 large English city, and was invited by a friend to 
 join a Good Templars' picnic. [P.S. Nearly all 
 journalists are Good Templars.] All the picnickers 
 were strangers to me except one. There was a very 
 pretty, giggly flirt in the crowd, whose name was 
 Funnie. A party of young fellows seemed anxious to 
 win her smiles, and she was no way shy. The man 
 who was most in earnest was a dark-faced young 
 fellow, whom his mates called " Billy," and on him 
 Fannie smiled pleasantly, for he had a pretty good 
 social position in the crowd. While we were awaiting 
 tea in a large garden, I took to " fortune telling " to 
 pass away the time, with the distinct understanding 
 that it was all humbug. The fair flirt Fannie fooled 
 round for a while, and I read her hand. It was easy 
 to see that she had smiled on many men in her day, 
 and she blushed about the "dark man" and the 
 " fair man," for she had flirted with all sorts. But 
 her heart was pining for a real lover, and I " saw one 
 in her hand," and described Billy, who was rather 
 peculiar in his ways. She was to marry the " dark 
 man," and have several children, and a good deal of 
 trouble, etc., etc. 
 
 Then Billy came along and presented his horny 
 paw. He had never had a real, true love till now, 
 and he had been born to hard work. He was going 
 to marry a " fair girl," and here followed an accurate 
 description of Fannie. Knowing that I was a stranger, 
 and could not possibly be acquainted with them, they 
 took it in good part, and, with the distinct under-
 
 Fortune Telhngi 75 
 
 standing that it was all humbug, we parted About 
 a year afterwards I gave a lecture on the frauds 
 connected with " fortune telling," explaining the 
 little truth that lay at the bottom of it, but cursing 
 the impostures that it gave rise to. At the close of 
 the lecture a very pretty girl came to me and said, 
 " There's a great deal of truth in fortune telling, in 
 spite of what you say, because you told my fortune 
 once, and it came true in every particular nearly," 
 and she giggled until I recognised the Fannie of the 
 picnic. A year or two later I met Fannie out with a 
 perambulator, and the " dark man," Billy, close beside 
 her. They had made their own fortunes, and thought 
 it had all been written in their hands by the good 
 God who made the universe. That couple believe 
 implicitly in fortune telling, because oh, because the 
 " Globe Trotter " read their hands, and he didn't 
 know a thing about them ; but he told them " all 
 sorts of things that happened in the past, and just 
 who they were going to marry and it all came true." 
 Exactly so poor fools that they were ! Anybody 
 can tell fortunes on that basis ! So do " fortune 
 tellers" often astonish simple people, who really 
 declare their own lives to the keen eyes of the pro- 
 fessional " palmist." 
 
 But, besides all this humbug, there are certain 
 lines in the hand that denote certain characteristics. 
 A sheepbreeder can run his eyes over a sheep and tell 
 you its chief point of merit or demerit. He may not 
 be able to put into exact words the reason for the 
 faith that is within him, but he knows what consti- 
 tutes the chief points in an animal. We all know a 
 good deal more than we can tell, and most of us 
 believe a good deal more than we know, but one 
 thing is certain in us all we see a good many things 
 that we are incapable of explaining. Look at your 
 own hand, and study the lines on it. In the average 
 hand there is a line runs along the base of the fingers, 
 say an inch down the palm. That is called, in the 
 art of the palmist, the line of the heart. If it is very
 
 76 Australian Gossip and Story, 
 
 wide at the part nearest the little finger, it denotes a 
 vivid imagination ; if it is abnormally wide it denotes 
 a weak intellect. You can only arrive at an idea of 
 what is normal by studying a lot of hands. Now, 
 trace that line over towards the index finger. If it 
 runs straight across it denotes an equable tempera- 
 ment, and tells that the owner is easy to get along 
 with ; if it turns up abruptly between the index and 
 the next finger, it means self-will, which may easily 
 run into pig-headedness. It is here that a man's 
 obstinacy, self-will, or real grit is notified. If the 
 line divides, and one part runs up and the other runs 
 down between the fingers, it indicates, as a rule, 
 self-will, along with easiness to lead. It means a 
 way of your own, along with the grace of yielding. 
 
 A little lower down is another line, crossing the 
 palm, running, to some extent, parallel to the other. 
 That is called the line of the head. It begins between 
 the index finger and the thumb If it ends before 
 reaching the centre of the palm, it indicates a poor intel- 
 lectual capacity ; if it crosses the centre of the palm it 
 indicates a good capacity; if it runs over to the edge of 
 the hand, it tells of the power for retaining money ; 
 if it divides at the edge of the palm, it indicates a 
 lack of what we term honesty. Some New Zealanders 
 have that bifurcation, and that is why they sold some 
 wethers for rams. They couldn't help doing that, 
 because the line divided We are what we are, 
 because we were born so, though Goethe says, " Some 
 of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result 
 of education ; it is a question which of the two give 
 us the most trouble." 
 
 Another line, running round the base of the 
 thumb, is called the line of life. It begins, also 
 between the forefinger and thumb. If it is clean cut, 
 deep and continuous down to the wrist, it denotes 
 descent from a line of strong, healthy people. Years 
 ago a young Hercules was visiting me, a strong, well- 
 built, splendid fellow. I looked at his hand and 
 said, laughingly, " Why, Sam, you're going to die
 
 Fortune Telling. 77 
 
 young." That was said because he looked so strong, 
 and because I had not then come to realise the truth 
 that lies hidden in the hand. He said, " Yes, I know 
 that. My father dropped dead when he was thirty- 
 five. It is the heart that troubles ray family." The 
 deep pathos in his voice gave me the horrors, and I 
 rarely read hands now, and never tell all I see. 
 
 These are the main lines of the truth that 
 underlie the fortune teller's miserable trade, and 
 these form the basis of all the delusions that have 
 made the business so enduring through all the ages of 
 the world. Why those lines denote certain things I 
 know not, but they do. Because they do, the fortune 
 teller flourishes, and all human beings desire, at some 
 time or other, to lift the curtain of the morrow, and 
 the Quaker poet only voiced the mighty yearning 
 when he sang 
 
 "Oh, Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing, 
 Through the strange world round us growing, 
 Speak and tell us where we're going." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The editor of this paper said, " We don't want 
 any more articles on " Fortune Telling," Mr. ' Globe 
 Trotter,' " but an advertisement in last Saturday's 
 Herald made him re-consider that order. It was a 
 lovely advertisement, that might have been been paid 
 for by the " Globe Trotter " just to show how true his 
 words were. It was inserted by " M. Jaffar Najjar, 
 Egyptian geological and astrological diviner." That 
 was in the S.M. Herald of Saturday, July 21, 1894. 
 Joseph and Mrs. Potiphar and Pharaoh and that 
 crowd are not so very far away, after all. And all 
 the fools are not dead yet. Some hard-headed stock 
 agents would have you believe that fortune telling is 
 old and played out, and musty-fusty foolish, but it is 
 all alive and kicking, as our dear brother, M. Jaffar 
 Najjar, could probably testify. 
 
 He tells fortunes by means of the earth and the
 
 78 Austral fan Gossip and Story 
 
 stars. He will read your fortune from a sand-heap, 
 as I have seen the Arabs do in a Moslem market- 
 place. He will tell your fortune from the earth by 
 geological methods, or from the stars, if you will pay 
 to have your horoscope cast. Let me tell you a 
 story, sweet and sympathetic readers. Once upon a 
 time, and a middling very middling good time it 
 was, a very long time ago, I was teaching a Sunday- 
 school class in a little village, inhabited chiefly by 
 darkies, the most of whom were runaway slaves from 
 the Southern States. They were a simple and child- 
 like lot, and they looked upon me as a very wise man, 
 so that showed that they were very ignorant. One 
 Sunday afternoon I was explaining to them that we 
 live on a globe, and we are circling round the sun, 
 upheld by a power which passeth all understanding. 
 At noon we are on top, narest the sun, and at mid- 
 night we are underneath, furthest away from the sun. 
 Of course, we all believe that, or we think we do, or 
 we don't think about it at all ; but we would probably 
 say we believed it if we were asked. The darkies 
 took in that yarn without a word, and I thought it 
 was all right, but if Brother Jaffar had been at the 
 door of the school-room when we came out he would 
 have laughed. 
 
 My class was waiting for me outside, and the 
 village blacksmith, Jim Baker, was the spokesman. 
 He looked at me very solemnly, and said, " Look'e 
 heah, massa ! Don' you say we's a-livin' on a globe ? " 
 making a sphere with his hand as I had done. 
 " Yes." " An' don' you say as we'se up heah at 
 dinner time, and we's down heah at night ? " motion- 
 ing with his hands. "Yes" "Well, look'e hc;ih, 
 how is it we don't tumble off when we se down heah, 
 eh ? " and Jim roared with laughter at tny silly 
 conceit, and all the assembled darkies joined in right 
 scornfully. There was a mean nigger named Ben, 
 who used to peddle watermelons, stood at the back 
 of the crowd, and when the first laugh had subsided 
 he said, " How is it all de water don run out ob de
 
 Fortune Telling. 79 
 
 wells when de wells is upside down, eh ? Yah, yah, 
 ha ! " and he yelled at his own. idea. 
 
 From that day forth my influence over the 
 darkies had gone. They wrote me down an ass. 
 Any man who held such a fool theory as that was 
 unfit to boss a nigger meeting, and they scorned me ; 
 but they would have believed in Brother JafTar. 
 They believed that this old world of ours was the 
 centre of the universe, and that the sun, moon and 
 stars were but the adjuncts thereto, set to give us 
 light, or to beautify the sky about us. Not only did 
 they believe this, but they believed that anybody who 
 did not share their belief was a fool, if not a knave. 
 They would have fought like tigers for their belief, 
 too, because they were like the men of old, of whom 
 it was said they 
 
 " Prove their doctrines orthodox, 
 By Apostolic blows and knocks ; 
 Call fire and sword and desolation 
 A godly, thorough reformation." 
 
 One of the most egotistical and magnificent 
 impertinences on earth is the one that weaves the 
 destiny of the man in with that of the star The 
 idea that the meanest loafer on the Domain affects 
 the remotest star, and that the movements of the 
 mcst kingly star in the heavens is interwoven with 
 ths fate of the meanest Domain loafer, is simply 
 sublime impudence. Yet that is what astrology 
 means. Nobody but an ignoramus could assume for 
 a moment that the stars could tell him a cure for 
 livsr worm in his sheep, yet Brother Jaffar probably 
 would. No man with the least claim to physical 
 knowledge would think of consulting the stars about 
 the state of his wife's health, or the winner of the 
 Melbourne Cup ; yet that is the kind of folly that 
 crowds the Sydney papers to-day with the advertise- 
 ment of seers, palmists, astrologers and quacks. And 
 it has been so for many a weary century, for Hudibras 
 tells the same things of the Brother Jaffars of two 
 centuries ago, who
 
 80 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 " Feed the pulses of the stars 
 To find out agues, coughs, catarrhs ; 
 And tell what crisis does divine 
 The rot in sheep, or mange in swine." 
 
 But what think ye of a few facts like these 1 
 The earth this great, big, fevered, bustling world of 
 ours is, say, 25,000 miles in circumference. It 
 circles round the sun in 365 days, at the rate of 
 68,000 miles an hour. You need to say a thing like 
 that slowly, so you can take it in. The Western 
 train goes tearing along from Sydney at the rate of 
 30 miles an hour sometimes ; and if, when it was 
 going at that rate, it ran into another train, or on to 
 a rock, it would make a fearful smash up. Well, 
 this world where we were born, and where we worry, 
 and where we bury, is travelling at the rate of 
 68,000 miles an hour, and never stops for wood, or 
 water, or Sundays, or elections, or anything else. 
 The sun, round which it revolves, is 92 million miles 
 away. You couldn't send frozen mutton there, eh ? 
 What about your 12 or 14 thousand miles to Europe 
 now ? That sun is close to us compared to the stars. 
 The nearest star is so many millions and billions of 
 miles distant that the mention of it only reveals how 
 much a man doesn't know. If you were to travel 92 
 million miles to the sun, and have a " smoke-oh " and 
 look round, you wouldn't be an inch nearer to the 
 stars. They are so far away that 92 million miles 
 don't make any difference to them. Oh, Brother 
 Jaffar ! 
 
 The fixed stars are suns, some of them bigger 
 than our sun, and our great, big, fiery sun, that 
 sucks up all the water on the plains and drinks up 
 all our rivers, and robs our flocks of water, and 
 brings death to sheep and sundowners, is only a baby 
 star itself. Our sun is only a speck in the universe, 
 a sand grain amid the multitude of stars that fleck 
 the shoreless sea of the infinite. And our earth ? 
 Poor little wandering speck of fire-spun matter. If 
 our sun is a speck, then what is our earth ! Poor,
 
 Fortune Telhng* 81 
 
 pitiful little speck, circling round a larger speck ! 
 The suns endure for millions of years, but a man is 
 old at three score years and ten, and he lays him 
 down and sleeps, and his mental parts are rendered 
 up to the elements, and he who was once a king 
 becomes but a mass of undistinguishable phosphates, 
 while the mighty stars still burn and shine. And 
 Brother Jaffar will read the stars and tell you how 
 it will prosper with the wool you sent to Europe ; 
 how it will fare with your love, and your business, 
 your pleasure and your woe. He will tell you for the 
 stars know it all when you will die, and, perhaps, 
 where you will go to after that. Ha ! ha ! This is 
 a mad world, my masters, a mad world indeed ! 
 
 But listen ! We, in our sublime ignorance, 
 hitch the passionless, sky-travelling, space-despising 
 orbs of heaven to our little hives, and dream 
 not of impertinence ; but what about the Jaffars ! 
 The advertisement in the Herald will explain that. 
 Brother Jaffar says that he wrote to the Herald in 
 February, 1894, to inform the electors that at the 
 " general election the policy of the Government would 
 be ' Protection.' " He meant by that that the election 
 would result in the return of Protectionists, and he 
 says, " ' Lord, who hath believed our report ? ' " 
 That's just what I would say, indeed ! But he 
 proceeds to say that he is quite firm in his prediction, 
 and that he has done this " to demonstrate to atheists, 
 agnostics and materialists that only the Deity rules 
 the universe, and, in His providence, endows with 
 this power whosoever He will, as you will find here- 
 after." Good, Jaffar ! He foretold what would 
 happen, and it didn't happen, and now he advertises 
 in the daily papers to show that he meant it, and you 
 had better look out ; and that is just like a fortune 
 teller. Astrologers have a bad time of it generally 
 in an unbelieving place like Sydney, but if Jaffar 
 could give us a tip for the Melbourne Cup he need 
 never do another stroke of work in his life. The 
 stars can tell you a lot of things, but never a thing
 
 82 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 that is of the slightest use. Poor stars ! Happy, 
 happy Jaffar ! Astrology is dead, except for fools ! 
 Pa'inistry is kept alive by the cuteness of its adepts ; 
 cards and teacups are almost discredited, but they 
 still linger with us in odd .corners. But when we 
 read an advertisement like Jaffar's, we realise, in a 
 dim way, something of the world's undying folly 
 and we 
 
 " Look up to the great wide sky, 
 Enquiring wherefore we were born 
 For earnest or for jest."
 
 Money-lenders' Tricks. 
 
 83 
 
 /A qeij- tie riders' friers. 
 
 GOOD many years ago I knew a religious 
 man, a very religious man, who took up 
 the business of lending money. He had 
 seen advertisements of "Christian men'' 
 who had money to lend to widows and orphans, and it 
 seemed to him to be a good business. He wanted to help 
 the widow and the orphan on " reasonable terms," 
 and serve God while he worshipped mammon. He 
 scooped in his fellow Christians until he had secured 
 a regular nest of deacons, elders and parsons to form 
 the company, and the way it was done was pitiful. 
 
 A good man strolled into the office one day, and 
 the religious man invited him to join the money- 
 lending business. The good man flared up and said, 
 " No ; I like to know what my money is doing. I 
 don't want to be making my interest out of the blood 
 of miserable failures." He was a good man. When 
 the religious man got to talking about 25 per cent., 
 and perhaps more, it undermined the good man's 
 resolutions, and he finally took a large number of 
 shares. Poor man ! When the devil comes in 
 plausible shape, offering a large return, it s hai-d to 
 resist him, especially when a church deacon holds 
 the bait. It's very easy for some of us moneyless 
 ones to criticise our neighbours, but Burns put the 
 matter well when he said 
 
 " Then at the balance let's be just, 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 But know not what a resisted."
 
 84 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 It was something of a comfort to see that loan 
 society go " bung," and all the religious men left 
 regretting their softness, while the good men were 
 repenting of their folly. But the discovery the 
 religious money-lenders made was a curious one. 
 They found that there were a lot of reckless, adven- 
 turous, good-for-nothing wretches in the world, whose 
 sole means of livelihood appeared to be that of 
 preying on money-lenders. If a man with a soul goes 
 into the usury business, he will have to sell his soul 
 at an early date, or go bung. A sympathetic money- 
 lender, a money-lender with bowels of compassion, is 
 of no account. He must be dead to all the tender 
 feelings of humanity, and be able to sing, with 
 Rudyard Kipling 
 
 " We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love 
 
 and Truth ; 
 We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung." 
 
 We can pity a money-lender for what he once 
 was, but beware of him to-day. Here is how the 
 thing works : A selector, who lives not more than 
 2,000 miles from Sydney, was hard pushed for cash 
 as we all are just now - and he saw the advertise- 
 ment of a money-lender. It was such a nice 
 little advertisement. You would think that the man 
 who inserted it had corns on his hands with giving 
 out money to poor people. You would think the man 
 who put that advertisement in was a real Christian 
 with a heart as big as all out of doors, and a sympathy 
 as wide as the world. This man who lent money 
 we'll call him Jones, because that's not his name 
 said he never refused an applicant, and he charged no 
 fees ; and he was one of the kindest, nicest men in 
 the world. It was an advertisement that was 
 brimming over with the song 
 
 ' ' Will you walk into my parlour ? " 
 
 This selector, whom we will call Smith, because 
 his name isn't Smith, applied for a loan, and he knows 
 now how some loan offices are worked. He has
 
 M%ney-lender3 Tricks. 85 
 
 " been there," so to speak, and he knows. He 
 received a real nice, cordial, friendly reply, written 
 by the same hand as wrote the advertisement. It 
 said there would be no trouble about a loan at all, 
 and they would attend to it at once ! That was nice. 
 It filled his soul with hope, and he saw himself 
 walking into the village grocery to pay his long- 
 standing account. He revelled in the joy of having 
 a balance at the bank once more, and he had a good 
 time over it. Then Mr. Jones wrote to say that they 
 would need to send a valuator on behalf of their 
 client who was advancing the money, because, of 
 course, it wasn't Jones and Co. who were advancing 
 the money Oh, no ! They were simply the agents, 
 as it were. Their hearts were tender and sympa- 
 thetic, and things and they were only acting for 
 others. It didn't say so in the advertisement, but, 
 then, that was a detail. However, it was only fair 
 that the selection should be valued, even if it were 
 going to cost ,12 12s. cash, in advance ; so Smith 
 borrowed that from a friend. The valuator came out 
 and had a look round. He was a nice man, and 
 seemed so pleased with the place. He was a real 
 good man for his business, for he made Smith feel 
 that he had a lovely place, and that he was doing the 
 right thing in borrowing money of Jones. He was a 
 nice man ! 
 
 Then there was a delay of a few days, and 
 Smith kept watching for a letter, and going into 
 town every post and bailing up every passer-by who 
 might have brought the letter with a cheque in it, 
 but it didn't come. When a letter came at last it 
 had no cheque in it. Mr. Jones found that his 
 client " would require a plan of the selection, and we 
 could scarcely object to that ; but we regret that it 
 will cost 3 3s. at the Lands Office. If you send 
 that sum along we will have a tracing made at once, 
 and you can come down and sign the deeds, and all 
 will be well." Mr. Jones was so sorry for giving all 
 the trouble, but " if you remit the 3 3s. you can
 
 86 Anstsahan Gossip and Story. 
 
 come down on Thursday next and complete the 
 transaction." 
 
 Poor Smith ! His whole heart was fixed on the 
 idea of getting the money. He borrowed from his 
 agents the three guineas, and the fare and expenses 
 to Sydney. He sent the money along, then he came 
 to town with a wildly-beating pulse. At the appointed 
 time he went to look for the gorgeous office of the 
 great financier Jones, who used such stylish note- 
 paper, and he was startled at what he discovered. 
 The office was up such a lot of stairs ! There was no 
 furniture in it, except a stool, an old chair, a ricketty 
 table, and a waste-paper basket ! Jones was evidently 
 a philanthropist ! He lived with the simplicity of a 
 Stoic, and, by virtue of his self-denial, was able to 
 help the suffering world. He was there himself, but 
 his " client," for whom he acted, was not. He would 
 be in to-morrow, and Smith would get a note at his 
 hotel, telling him when to come round and get the 
 money. Next morning a note came to say that 
 " We deeply regret to inform you that our client 
 refuses to make the advance upon your selection." 
 That was all ! 
 
 Poor Smith ! It had cost him 20 to find out 
 that Jones was a scheming, silver-tongued devil, who 
 had no money and no intention of raising money for 
 him. Tt had cost him over 20 to find out what his 
 agents could have told him first off. It cost him over 
 20 to realise the depth of his own folly. It cost him 
 over 20 to find out what some of us have known for 
 many years. There are "money-lenders" in Sydney 
 who never lend a shilling, but live on the " fees " of 
 poor men like Smith. There are miserable ghouls in 
 Sydney who live in clover when times are bad, and 
 revel on the misfortunes of their fellows. They are 
 the carrion crows of civilisation, and should be torn 
 to pieces by wild horses ; but what can be done ? 
 What could Smith do? He had no legal remedy. 
 When he went back to the office he found that Jones 
 was absent. He might, certainly, have kicked him
 
 Money-lenders' Tricks. 87 
 
 to death if he had found him, but that was all he 
 could do, and that wouldn't bring back his 20 
 Poor Smith ! 
 
 If you must borrow money, Mr. Selector, write 
 to your town agents, or somebody you know, and 
 deal with a square firm, for there, probably, are 
 " square firms," but borrowing money is a bad 
 business. " He who goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrow- 
 ing," and don't you forget it.
 
 88 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 /XVaq-rqade Calendars, 
 
 New South Wales had sense she would fall 
 down and worship the Seventh-Day Adventists. 
 They come like the Waverley pens, " as a 
 boon and a bl -.ssin<j to men." These Advent- 
 ists ought to set us all to thinking, and, if so, they 
 would deserve canonisation, but they won't ! We 
 are such a fat-headed 1< >t of fools that even Adventists 
 fail to reach our intellects. Some of us will write to 
 the Daily Telegraph, and some of us will settle the 
 matter by calling them fools, but very few of us will 
 sit down to think the thing out. 
 
 You would imagine, to hear some people talk, 
 that Seventh-Day Adventism was new, and that this 
 trouble about which day is the " Lord's Day " was a 
 modern affliction, but it isn't. Julius Caesar tried to 
 fix it up, but he couldn't. You ask Galton, the 
 imported historian of New South Wales ! He doesn't 
 know much about New South Wales, but he knows a 
 good deal about Julius Gsesar ! He could, probably, 
 tell you how J.C. tried to arrange the calendar, and 
 did arrange it too, but it all tumbled to bits, and 
 Pope Gregory had to fix it up again in another 1500 
 years or so. These Farramatta Adventists are stale, 
 stale as ditch-water, but we don't know it. 
 
 When I was a boy they brought me up piously 
 anybody could tell thatand made me believe that 
 the seventh day was the Sabbath, and that a man 
 was put up into the moon for picking sticks on a 
 Sunday and Sunday, of course, was the seventh 
 day ! We nearly all believed that once ! There are 
 men in Sydney who put on a clean shirt and a nice 
 suit of clothes on the first day of every week out of 
 respect to that old fetish even now. But a sad 
 awakening came to me.
 
 Man-made Calendars. 89 
 
 When I was young and guileless I used to go 
 trading across the Pacific from 'Frisco to China. 
 When we crossed some particular spot in the Pacific 
 Ocean we dropped a day, or gained a day, according 
 to the direction we were going in. Coming from 
 California we gained a day, and I always yearned to 
 come to the jump on a Sunday, so that we would 
 have two " duff days," two idle days, in one week ; 
 but we never did ! We always got to the jump on a 
 pork day ! That was the cheapest day for the owners. 
 When we were going the other way we always lost a 
 " duff day." None of us understood it, but we 
 caught on to the idea that the skipper had arranged 
 it somehow ; so he did ! The calendar is a matter of 
 simple business calculation, and if men weren't fools 
 they would see it, and would never talk about stocks 
 for Adventists. Perhaps the subject is too deep for 
 men who deal in frozen meat and sheep and cattle 
 and horses and station stuff? Not a bit of it ; they 
 are not the men who cry 
 
 " Ever the problem besets me, in labour, in sorrow, in 
 laughter ; 
 
 Mystery of mysteries, too wide for conception, too deep and 
 too high ! 
 
 Imbecile ! What doth it profit to gaze on the mists of 
 Hereafter ? 
 
 Turn me away from them. Eat, drink, be merry ; to- 
 morrow we die." 
 
 The readers of the Stock Journal are men of 
 sense, and the question of the calendar is not a 
 religious one, but a business one. The sap-heads of 
 Adventists and their silly opponents are making it a 
 religious question, but they are clams ! 
 
 When the world was flat, and the entire earth 
 was under the flap of the Roman Eagle's wing, it was 
 easy for the king to say, " Let the day after to- 
 morrow be a day of rest." But when Copernicus 
 came along and said the world was round, it was 
 awkward. When Copernicus said that the sun was 
 not made to rule the day, but that our mud-ball 
 circled round the sun, it was worse. It took the
 
 90 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 starch out of some of the mighty ones. It began to 
 look as if our earth were only "small potatoes, and 
 few in a heap," and if Copernicus hadn't died about 
 the time he did, there would have been grave trouble 
 for him. 
 
 When the little, lame Portuguese navigator. 
 Ferdinand Magellan, started out on his wonderful 
 voyage round the world, and came out into our 
 Pacific Ocean, through the straits that bear his death- 
 less name, he discovered strange things. He saw the 
 Southern Cross ; he saw the white clouds that we 
 call to-day " Magellan's Clouds." He saw strango 
 islands and strange races, such as Christian men had 
 never seen before. He hungered, thirsted, suffered 
 and enjoyed as few men have ever done ; but the 
 miserable, small-souled wretches who voyaged with 
 him murdered him somehow, or somewhere, nobody 
 knows how, poor little soul ! He never lived to 
 discover that calendars were made by men, and not 
 by gods. 
 
 When Magellan's ships returned, after three 
 years' absence, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, 
 and reached civilisation, they discovered a horrible 
 thing. They were a day out in their reckoning ! 
 They had been keeping saints' days, holy days, feast 
 days, fast days, and Sundays on the wrong day, for 
 heaven knows how long. Yet the Lord was not 
 angry with them. The Lord of heaven and earth is 
 kinder to us than our fellow creatures. 
 
 What is it that Faber says? Something like 
 this 
 
 " There's a wideness in God's goodness, 
 
 Like the wideness of the sea ; 
 There's a kindness in his justice 
 That is more than liberty. " 
 
 Magellan's sailors discovered that Sunday is a 
 geographical arrangement, and that feast days and 
 holy days are arranged, not by high Heaven, but by 
 earthly calendar makers ! 
 
 When the early men first began to measure time,
 
 Man-made Calendars 91 
 
 they had an awful problem to solve. You see, if the 
 king were born in the Grecian month of Mary only 
 Mary's month hadn't been invented then - they cele- 
 brated it in the sweet summer time ; but every year 
 the birthday got further and further away from the 
 summer time, until, when the king was old and 
 feeble, his birthday came in mid-winter. It took the 
 priests, and the soothsayers, and- the wise men 
 hundreds of years to try and fix up a calendar that 
 would bring the king's birthday or the saturnalia at 
 the same season of the year. It was a good Pope 
 (God rest him !) who fixed us up at last with 365 
 days in a year, and 366 in a leap year, to even things 
 up. That was in 1582, but we good Protestants 
 wouldn't accept anything of the kind. We protested 
 against it, and refused to accept any " Popish inno- 
 vations." We're a wise family ! But all the crowd 
 that bucked against the Pope is dead 
 
 " Their bones are dust, 
 And their swords are rust, 
 And their souls are with the saints 
 We trust." 
 
 The Catholics get along all right after the Pope 
 arranged things, but the Protestant calendar kept 
 getting worse and worse, until at last Lord Chester- 
 field brought in a bill, in the reign of George II., to 
 drop eleven days and get even with the Catholics. 
 If J. C. Neild had been along about that time, 
 he'd have had a picnic ! In spite of the jawbones of 
 that day, the bill was passed, arid it was arranged 
 that on September 3rd, 1752, the calendar should be 
 shifted on to September 14th! What a howl it 
 raised, and no wonder. Fancy, when the spooks 
 came out to walk on All Souls' Eve, they would get 
 mixed. The Catholic spirits would be on the wallaby 
 track eleven days before the Protestant spirits, if 
 they attended to the calendar made by Act of Parlia- 
 ment. And now the Parliament was going to fix it 
 so that the same night would suit them both. All 
 the Jawbone Neilds of the land rose up and yelled
 
 92 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 " Give us back our eleven days." " Down with the 
 Pope." " Who stole our eleven days ? " but it was 
 no use. We dropped eleven days, and still grew, 
 like the Galatians, to reverence the new days and 
 times and seasons, just as if God had arranged them. 
 As a small boy I was taught that Sunday was the 
 seventh day, which God had ordered to be kept holy, 
 and when the skipper arranged the change on the 
 Pacific Ocean, it was an awful shock to me, but why 
 should it be so 1 Why can we not be as honest about 
 our religion as about our daily business 1 Some of us 
 give up work on one day of the week all right 
 enough, if we are not on the daily press but if we 
 had sense we would try to arrange it so that we 
 would only work one day in the week and play the 
 rest. Instead of accepting the calendar as a man- 
 made institution, and making it a good day, here we 
 go talking about putting up stocks for a silly 
 Adventist who wants to obey the Scripture as he 
 reads it, and keep some other day holy. Listen to 
 me, dear readers. A man who wants to keep holy 
 one day in the week is either a fool or a knave, or 
 both. Good men ought to keep holy every day, and 
 never try to keep one day holy to the hurt of the 
 others. But a lot of us pray on our knees on a 
 Sunday, and prey 011 our neighbours through the 
 week, and of such is the kingdom of cant.
 
 Hydatid Cysts. 93 
 
 hudatid Gusts. 
 
 I *^ */ 
 
 you ever read " Three Men in a Boat ? " 
 Do you remember the one who read a 
 doctor's book and found that one of the 
 signs of liver disease was a disinclination to 
 work 1 He had suffered from that disease all his 
 life, and his cruel father had tried to cure him with a 
 stick. That man read the doctor's book, and found 
 in himself the signs of every disease referred to 
 except " Honsemaids' Knee." If you are given that 
 way, don't read this article ; put down the paper at 
 once, or else turn to "Flotsam and Jetsam/' or some- 
 thing light. But, reader, if you like to sup on horrors 
 and revel in real ghastliness, just light your pipe, sit 
 down, and let's have a yarn. 
 
 In our last issue there was a brief account of a 
 little girl in Goulburn having a great big hydatid 
 taken out of her skull. It must have been a fearful 
 operation, but it shows what strides surgical science 
 is making. We hope that by-and-bye the surgeons 
 will be able to cut the bad parts out of a baby's brain 
 and make an incipent scoundrel into a sweet and 
 virtuous citizen. 
 
 In Iceland, that strange, cold, volcanic island in 
 the North Atlantic, about one-sixth of the total 
 death-rate is due to hydatids. Not because the place 
 is cold exactly, but partly because the people are 
 poor, and suffer from cold. It's this way. The 
 Icelanders all keep dogs, and dogs keep hydatids. 
 The men are fond of their dogs, and, as the climate 
 is deadly cold, they have to keep them indoors in 
 winter time, so the dogs often sleep in the same bed 
 as the peasants. Then, too, they eat off the same 
 plate, and, if the Icelander is not very particular, he
 
 94 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 allows the dog's lick to serve instead of a washing. 
 Now, dogs are the nursing mothers of hydatids. 
 Over 28 per cent, of Icelandic dogs are crawling with 
 hydatids, so it is no wonder that the disease is very 
 prevalent amongst the people. 
 
 What are hydatids 1 Why, tapeworms, of 
 course ! The word is from the Greek hydatis, a 
 watery vesicle, and the grown-up, sexual, hydatid is a 
 tape-worm that lives in a dog or a wolf. If you ask 
 a scientific prig what a hydatid is, he may tell you 
 that it is a Tcenia echinococcus, and that its method 
 of reproduction is peculiar, and that " the casting off 
 of the sexual segments is in some respects comparable 
 to the detachment of the hectocotylized arm of a 
 cephalopod, and the formation of new joints to the 
 development of an Oligochsetous worm." Then you 
 know all about it. 
 
 In Sydney we have a fearful lot of mangy, 
 miserable, masterless dogs If they were killed and 
 examined, a lot of them would be found to be full of 
 tiny tape-worms, such as give rise to hydatids. 
 When these tape-worms give birth to eggs, they are 
 such small specks of things as to be invisible to the 
 naked eye. These are extruded from the dog in 
 different ways, but the chief way is by the mouth of 
 the beast. They come upwards on to its tongue, and 
 when the dog licks itself they cling to its hair. 
 When it drinks they are set free in the water. They 
 mingle with its excreta and haunt the kennel. They 
 are everywhere. A little girl in New Soutli Wales 
 was very fond of the family dog all little girls are 
 she cuddled it and kissed it and made it her playmate. 
 After a while it was discovered that there was a 
 strange growth in her inside. The doctors said sin- 
 had hydatids. She was put under chloroform and 
 opened, and the doctors took out a great mass of stuff 
 from her inside, which they called a " hydatid cyst " 
 The tiny worms from the long-forgotten dog had 
 passed into her stomach The gastric juices had 
 thawed them out, and a tiny, six-clawed worm had
 
 Hydatid Cysts. 95 
 
 fastened on to her stomach and eaten its way out 
 into the blood, and had settled in her abdomen. Then 
 it lost its claws, and settled down to reproduce of its 
 kind by budding. It built itself a case from out the 
 tissues of the little girl's body, and on the inside of 
 the case it budded and spread and increased until it 
 weighed about seven pounds, and the little giri 
 seemed to be dying. Then the doctors took out the 
 mass and saved her life. 
 
 That is many a year since. She grew up to 
 womanhood. She had a sweetheart, and was married 
 to him, and life was very pleasant on the lovely 
 hillside where they dwelt, until she became ill. They 
 thought it was the natural state of young wives, but 
 she grew ghastly-looking, and was dying while she 
 walked and worked. Then the doctors came and 
 diagnosed her case, and said it was hydatids. 
 Another operation, and they removed from her an 
 enormous cyst, weighing nearly twenty pounds ! 
 The tiny eggs from some favourite dog had wrought 
 sore havoc with her. We met the poor, weak woman 
 when on a vacation away from the roar of Sydney 
 life, and it was pitiful to look upon her. How came 
 the second attack ? Had the cyst broken and allowed 
 an escape, which developed into proper tape- worms? 
 Had they lived all these years cursing the woman's 
 life 1 Who shall say ? Life is a mystery ; we come 
 from the earth, and we return to the earth, and thus 
 many a strange chance happens to us on the road, 
 but we know little more about it all than did 
 Lucretius, the noble Roman, who died ere Christ 
 was born. He sang, in that old long ago 
 
 "Then learn 
 
 That what of us was taken from the dust 
 Will surely one day to the dust return ; 
 And what the air has lent us Heaven will bear 
 Away and render back its own to air." 
 
 What a strange rendering up it is when the 
 hydatid takes the process in hand. 
 
 The bladder worm, as it is often called, was
 
 96 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 known to the great Aristotle, and to Hippocrates, 
 but how it came to the birth none dared to say. 
 For long ages it was believed to be the product of 
 spontaneous generation, a free gift of the devil ; but 
 in 1781 Pallas, the naturalist, suggested that it, 
 maybe, came from an egg. Then, in 1845, the 
 famous Steenstrup came out with the theory of the 
 alternation of generation. That was a novel theory, 
 but see how it worked in the liver-fluke. See how 
 each generation was different from its predecessor, 
 until we had worked a whole round of living things 
 to get back to the old liver-fluke. So is it with this 
 fearsome thing that is spreading so rapidly in Aus- 
 tralia. The hydatid cyst taken from the little girl's 
 skull at Goulburn was the child of the tape-worm 
 that once lived in a dog. A great doctor, Kuchen- 
 meister, collected a large number of cysts, and their 
 history showed what a dreadful curse the disease is. A 
 large number of cysts were taken from the brain, where 
 they used to be always fatal. Sixteen cyst bearers 
 showed no signs of disease during life ; in six there 
 were slight signs of derangement ; twenty-four were 
 cases of epilipsy, six of cramp, forty-two of paralysis, 
 and twenty-three of mental disturbances of varying 
 degrees of intensity. What a suggestion of epiliptics 
 and paralytics from this accursed disease, from the 
 growth of this horrible cyst. The small worm, the 
 first tiny visitor, gets into the currents of the blood, 
 and may find a rest anywhere. It goes dancing 
 through the veins in the red current of the life, and 
 no man can tell where it will anchor. A great 
 doctor went carefully into the subject to test some 
 previous experiments, and of all the cases examined 
 he found that 46 per cent, of the drifting worms had 
 made a home in the liver, six per cent, in the brain, 
 3| per cent, in the heart. Some were in the lungs, 
 some in the muscular tissues, and some even in the 
 bones. He affirmed that 25 per cent, of the cases 
 proved fatal. 
 
 How do you get hydatids ? By drinking impure
 
 Hydatid Cysts. 
 
 97 
 
 water, by eating salads that grow in damp places in 
 Chinamen's gardens, by caressing dogs, by all the 
 thousand and one processes of life. You cannot 
 guard against the horrors, but now that the disease 
 is spreading in Australia we ought to start a crusade 
 against unclean dogs, and against pet dogs inside cosy 
 houses. We should shriek out when we see children 
 fondling dogs, and if we were wise we would scald the 
 kennels of our favourites frequently. It is the most 
 awful curse of modern life, for these hideous tape- 
 worm born cysts reach to even 30 Ibs. weight inside 
 of a poor mortal, and the torture of them is past all 
 description. Reader, fill pur pipe again, and take 
 this horrible story to heart. Don't try and feel if 
 you have any hydatids about you ; but, for the sake 
 of those who are suffering now, try and awaken 
 attention to this dread disease, and prevent it from 
 spreading further.
 
 98 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 jSpiritualistie Etfperienees. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Methodists have one of the finest plans 
 pi r ^ual development that ever was 
 invented. One of the Wesleys put it in 
 order for them. It is this : On a certain 
 night of each week the members of the congregation 
 are to meet with certain holy men, appointed leaders, 
 in what is called a " class," and are there to relate 
 their " experiences," and the " leader" will give them 
 such words of reproof, advice, or consolation, as may 
 be deemed necessary. If all the Methodists lived up 
 to their " class-night " experiences, they would con- 
 quer the world, but, unfortunately, they cannot do it. 
 They dare not speak out for themselves. They 
 acquire a parrot-like form of expression, and if you 
 attend a " class " for a few nights you will be able to 
 tell what every member is going to say. That is 
 because of the famous amount of sheepishness that 
 exists in our race. All we like sheep go after our 
 leader. But that is not purely a Methodist weakness. 
 If you send a reporter to a place to look up a series 
 of facts, you can measure him up and tell what he 
 will see before he goes. Reporters are not Methodists, 
 as a rule, but they are methodists in their way. A 
 Sydney reporter is doing the spiritualistic business in 
 Sydney just now, and he is making the most awful 
 mess of it. His reports are just a little bit worse 
 than anything that ever saw the light before in a 
 professedly intelligent paper. 
 
 Before making any remarks on spiritualism, 
 please allow me to explain. Any man who makes 
 unkind remarks about his neighbour's religion is a
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 99 
 
 Philistine. We ought to respect a man's religion. 
 But, as an old journalist, I claim a right to throw 
 stones at the miserable professors of all classes. I've 
 lived amongst religions of many kinds, and have a 
 profound regard for some of them. ;'ve gone to 
 " make chin-chin for Joss " at a Chinese temple, and 
 have slunk out of sight of the fiery Moslem zealots 
 who were making martyrs of themselves to please 
 Allah. I've seen all kinds of religions on tap, and 
 respect them all, but I'm down on the shams who 
 belong to them. Spiritualism is a religion to some 
 people, so I haven't a word to say against it ; but the 
 editor of the " Stock and Station Journal " wants my 
 views on the subject, my ' experiences," as it were, so 
 hats off, gentlemen ! 
 
 A Boston editor said to me one time, " Do you 
 know anything about spiritualism 1 " 
 
 ' No, sir." 
 
 " Got any prejudices against it ? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " All right. You're the man I want to investi- 
 gate it." 
 
 A famous lady was in Boston at the time, Mrs. 
 Beecher Hooker, a sister of Henry Ward Beecher 
 and of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 This Mrs. Beecher Hooker was a spiritualist, and she 
 had with her a famous " medium " named Mrs. Maud 
 Lord. I went to their public demonstration, admis- 
 sion one dollar that's a part of the show that hurts, 
 because there's always somebody to scoop the pool. 
 When a man like Talmage comes along, purely on the 
 make, of course you can't say a word against him ; but 
 when a man or a woman comes along with a brand 
 new religion the dollar hurts. Being a pressman, I 
 went in " on the nod," of course, but the dollar gave 
 me a bad taste is my mouth all the same ! 
 
 On the platform the woman with the strong 
 Beecher face talked about spirits in a familiar way 
 that startled a man like me, for I had been brought 
 up to talk about the Holy Ghost in a reverent way ;
 
 100 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 but Mrs. Beecher Hooker didn't seem to see any 
 holiness about ghosts at all However, that is pro- 
 bably a matter of education and early training. She 
 introduced Maud Lord, a bouncing, black-eyed, 
 lascivious-looking woman who could talk whew ! 
 She fooled that audience to the fullest extent, 
 and told such infamous crammers that Baron Mun- 
 chausen was a fool beside her. But, then, it seemed 
 to me that they had paid their dollars to get fooled, 
 and they certainly got what they paid for. 
 
 I was introduced to her at the close, and she 
 was gracious very gracious, and invited mo to a 
 " dark seance," to take place at her house the following 
 Wednesday night. I was there, like a little man, and 
 walked in without paying my dollar, even though the 
 "medium "did not recognise me, which I thought 
 passing strange. Her henchman was a Scotchman, 
 who knew me, and was " unco' gracious," for I'm 
 Scotch sometimes, and you know what William Black 
 says 
 
 " From Hudson's Bay to the Rio Grande, 
 
 The Scot is ever a rover ; 
 In New South Wales and in Newfoundland, 
 
 And all the wide seas over. " 
 
 Well, he's a chummy rover, too, and this faith 
 ful servant of the great lady, Maud Lord, filled me up 
 with " facts " about spiritualism. There's always a 
 crowd ready to do that for the press, and sometimes 
 they get a fool like the Sydney man who's at it now 
 to print it. 
 
 In the room where the seance was about to take 
 place there were about 20 chairs. Each window and 
 door, except the one we entered by, was carefully 
 covered over by thick oilcloth, so that no ray of light 
 could enter, for the spirits do not act well in the 
 light. That's curious, isn't it 1 There were over 20 
 people in the room, each of whom had paid a dollar 
 for admission except the press so it was fairly pro- 
 fitable. That would make over four pounds of our 
 money ! The medium knew a lot of the people, and
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 101 
 
 set them all in order in a circle on the chairs, herself 
 occupying a chair in the centre. She had a guitar in 
 her hand and a small box beside her. When we were 
 all in order, and the medium was familiar with our 
 positions, I was asked to put out the light, which was 
 just beside me. I did so, and the darkness was pain- 
 ful. We were all to hold each other's hands, so as to 
 complete the circle. Then the medium commenced 
 tapping our knees. I wondered what that was for, 
 but a little fat woman at my side soon enlightened 
 me. She gasped out, " I felt a spirit hand touch 
 me !" and I found out that was the idea all round the 
 circle. It was so utterly idiotic that I couldn't 
 believe white people could be such fools yet they 
 were. I let go my hold on the fat woman's hand 
 and waited for the next tap. It came right on my 
 hand, and I grabbed the medium's fingers ; there was 
 no mistake about that. She didn't touch me again 
 for some time. 
 
 In a little while she said, " I see two fair child- 
 ren standing beside you." As it was pitch dark 
 nobody conld tell who " you " was meant for, but a 
 man's quaking voice said, " Beside me T " Yes," she 
 replied ; and then she told the miserable sinner that 
 the spirits were his children ; they were looking 
 at him with yearning eyes, and evidently longed to 
 speak to him. Then she asked him if he had two 
 children in the spirit land, and he said, ' : Yes ;" and 
 the fat woman at my side said, with a gurgle of ad- 
 miration, " Isn't it wonderful !" 
 
 Next a man got a tap on the knee, and was 
 informed that four sweet children were a-gazing at 
 him. He remarked, apologetically, that he only had 
 three across there ; but the medium said the fourth 
 was " very young, it never was named ; you never 
 knew it ; it blossomed on the other side ;" and the 
 man adopted the spirit kid, and there was great joy 
 over the medium's poser. It was wonderful ; but 
 when you found out that she knew several of the 
 sitters, it didn't sound so very wonderful after all.
 
 102 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 One woman was informed that she had " five 
 mothers " in the better land. There was a gasp of 
 astonishment at that, but it was all right when the 
 medium explained it. One was her own mother, 
 another was her husband's mother, and, as he had 
 been married twice, there were his two mothers-in-law. 
 That's easy, isn't it ? Some of these spiritual truths 
 are only spiritually discerned, but they are easy 
 enough when you understand them. 
 
 When the medium made a guess that was out of 
 it altogether, a whisper would be heard in the black 
 darkness, " No, not him," and somebody in the 
 circle would whisper, " The spirits are calling you, 
 Mrs. Lord." Then the medium would hear (?), and 
 the guessing would begin again. At times there was 
 an odour of flowers, as though the medium had 
 drawn a handkerchief out of her pocket, and the 
 little fat woman and her gang would gasp, " Oh, the 
 heavenly odour !" " Oh, the lovely flowers !" as 
 though heavenly visitors were bearing sweet gusts of 
 celestial fragrance to earthly nostrils. It seemed 
 utterly incredible that such things should fool sane 
 people, but they certainly did there. 
 
 I never got a message from the spirit land in 
 my life, because I never knew the name of the spook 
 that brought the message, but I had made up my 
 mind to know the next ghost that came along, 
 whether I knew it or not ; so when I got a smart 
 rap on the knee, telling me that a spirit was standing 
 beside me, I was ready. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The medium said " There is a spirit standing 
 beside you ; she is calling you by name. She is saying 
 1 Paul,' or ' Peter,' or some name that begins with P." 
 That was all right, for that was my newspaper name 
 on the particular paper that I was there representing. 
 You see my pseudynom was " Peter Anuet," and the
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 103 
 
 medium only knew me by that name, for it was on 
 my card. All the pressmen of the city knew my real 
 name, of course, but Mrs. Maud Lord didn't happen 
 to know it. 
 
 " It's Peter," I said. 
 
 " Yes, Peter Annet, I think ? " 
 
 " Yes, that's me." 
 
 Questions of grammar never trouble spooks nor 
 pressmen when out for the night. 
 
 " She is looking at you yearningly (all spirits 
 seem to yearn, or long), and her name is Ella, or 
 Millie, or something like that." You couldn't tell 
 exactly what name the medium said but I wasn't 
 going to be fooled any more, so I said, "Is it Ella ? " 
 " Yes, that's the name." 
 
 Now Ella was a bouncing Jersey girl who 
 boarded in the same house with me, and wasn't 
 within millions of miles of where some of us used to 
 think the spirit land is. But, so long as Ella was 
 looking yearningly at me I felt on solid ground, and 
 when the medium spoke up I knew just what to say. 
 There was a mournful tremor in the medium's voice 
 as she told me about Ella, who seemed to be my 
 deceased mother, or my deceased wife, or some other 
 defunct relative, as might happen to suit. It ought 
 to have been real affecting when the spook's voice 
 not behind me though said " Dear Peter," and the 
 medium said, " She stands looking at you with great 
 yearning eyes ; she reaches out her arms ; she wants 
 to kiss you," and I murmured softly "Let her;" but 
 she didn't ! Poor Ella, she came several times during 
 the evening, but we never got any better acquainted. 
 I told her all about it when I got home that night. 
 
 A little later on during the evening I had another 
 visit ; it was deeply interesting. There came a 
 ghostly whisper from out the awful darkness from 
 where the medium sat : " Uncle Peter ! Uncle 
 Peter ! " I said, " Hello !" Whereupon some little 
 angels whispered, " Uncle Peter, we're all here ;" 
 and I said I was so glad. No little children on earth
 
 104 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 had ever called me " Uncle Peter." No baby voices 
 had ever filled my listening ears with the soft cry of 
 " Uncle Peter," and it seemed wonderfully sweet to 
 be " Uncle Peter " to the angels. It would have 
 been worth a dollar if I had paid the fee. When an 
 account of this little escapade appeared in due course 
 in the papers, the wicked pressmen used to bail me 
 up in the public streets and say, " Hello, Uncle 
 Peter, come and have a whisky ! " There's no sense 
 of reverence in the average newspaper man. He is 
 almost past praying for. 
 
 In the middle of all the miserable spirit-voice 
 business and yearning and angel-whispers the medium 
 took up the guitar and started swinging it about, 
 thumming on the strings with her fingers not play- 
 ing a tune, mind, but simply thumming as a heedless 
 child might do. I wondered what that meant, but 
 the little fat woman opened my eyes. She gasped 
 out, in her gurgling, admiring little way, clasping my 
 hand spasmodically, " Oh, the heavenly music ! Oh, 
 the sweet music ! " When people want to be fooled 
 it's fearfully easy to fool them. When the " music " 
 ceased the medium dropped the guitar on to the floor, 
 and I felt the handle of it rear my foot, so I reached 
 out and seized it and fixed it between my legs. 
 " The next time the angels want any music," sez I 
 to myself, sez I, " they'll come for the instrument." 
 When, a little later on in the evening, there was a 
 call to "Dear Mrs. Lord" for some more music, I 
 could hear the spirits feeling round the floor for the 
 guitar ; but they couldn't find it, poor things, and 
 they didn't know enough to come to me for it either, 
 poor things. 
 
 There were three men in the circle who were 
 strangers to the medium, and every time she tried to 
 fix up a message for them she struck a snag ; she was 
 wrong every time. They wouldn't have spiritual 
 kids foisted on to them, nor deceased relatives of any 
 kind, and things got mixed. Finally, the gas had to 
 be lighted and a re-arrangement made and Mrs,
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 105 
 
 Lord took good care to fix the men's faces in her 
 mind while she was placing them afresh. After that 
 she tried her hand on them again and got along a 
 little better, for she knew which M us which now, but 
 they were not good subjects. 
 
 During the change I lost my little fat woman, 
 and found myself next to a delicate, sweet-faced, 
 hysterical, sorrow-smitten woman. She had volun- 
 teered to leave the circle when it was so crowded, as 
 she could "come in any time;" but she was kep 1 ; 
 for a hideously cruel purpose. After the light was 
 put out once more we had some " materializations." 
 The medium had a box with her, and out of this she 
 had apparently taken some gauzy material, with a 
 dab of phosphorus on it. This she swung round her 
 head, and as the folds of cloth opened and revealed 
 the phosphorised part, the little fat woman and her 
 stupid gang nearly went into fits of spiritual admira- 
 tion. They actually thought they saw faces and 
 figures and ghostly apparitions ; but the fraud was 
 so palpable, so glaring, so shallow, that I was 
 astonished. That medium must have been a genius 
 not to laugh right out. If men and women could 
 be brought to believe that the trickery of Maud Lord 
 was spiritualism, then indeed any belief is possible. 
 Bah ! we are fools ! 
 
 " Surely all life is a dream, mia-begot of Olympian derision, 
 And the divided, strange courses of men are bat dreams 
 within dreams." 
 
 When the wild excitement of this "material- 
 ization" was over, there came a tap on the knee of 
 the trembling lady at my side, and the voice of the 
 medium said, " I see four little spirits, dear, sweet 
 little spirits standing beside you, and they are calling 
 ' mamma, mamma.' The sickly woman trembled like 
 a leaf and whispered fearfully, " I had only two." 
 
 "Yes," said the medium, "only two are your 
 very own, the others were adopted ; but they call you 
 ' mamma ' in the spirit life."
 
 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 " Yes, that's right," said the sweet-faced woman. 
 " I adopted two little orphans in place of my own ; 
 but they died, too," and she cried like a child when 
 she thought of her loss. Just as she seemed to be 
 going off into hysterics there came a terrible pull and 
 a jerking at her shawl a light gossamer thing it was 
 and a voice whispering, 'We want to give you 
 mesmerism ; we want to strengthen you. you're 
 weak ; " and the little fat woman on the far side 
 gurgled, " Oh, how good ! " Then from the dark 
 centre of the dark circle came the whispering voice, 
 " Mamma, mamma, don't mourn for us, we're 
 better off," and the poor, feeble, grey-haired soul 
 replied through her tears, "I'm so glad, my darlings;" 
 and there was such motherly pathos in her voice that 
 I could have cried with her, but the desire to curse 
 the wicked sorceress in the centre was fe irfully 
 strong. The people in that circle believed as sin 
 cerely in Mrs. Lord as other people believe in their 
 Lord , but it is difficult for a pressman to be always 
 civil or always silent when he sees yuch things going 
 on in the name of religion, or of what passes for it. 
 
 Theie was much more of miserable buffooneiy, 
 but it was of a low type. The sitters were ready to 
 laugh at ghostly jokes or to weep over ghostly 
 sorrows a soft-hearted, soft-headed lot and there 
 was not one there that appealed to my heart, except 
 the sickly mother who wept for her dead children. 
 
 When the gas was turned up the crowd shook 
 hands with the medium and told the wonderful 
 things they had seen, and Mrs. Lord must have 
 enjoyed it greatly. She came to me and said, "Well, 
 sir, are you satisfied ? " I said, " Oh, yes, perfectly 
 satisfied : " but she was a woman with a level head 
 and saw what I meant. She left. Her Scotch hench- 
 man said, " Well, Mr. Annet, what do you think of 
 Mrs. Lord now ?" " She is a very smart woman," I said. 
 Then he took me to his private room and poured out 
 his admiration for Mrs. Lord, till it suddenly dawned 
 on hitri that I was " having him." Then aha, sweet
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 107 
 
 reader then he would fain have flung me upon the 
 unfeeling stones of that great and exceeding wretched 
 city, but he didn't. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 One day, in the town of Las Palrnas, in the 
 Canary Islands, I asked a man in Spanish the way to 
 a house I was looking for. He answered in Spanish, 
 giving the required directions, but I chipped in with, 
 " I hear by your Spanish that you're English." He 
 burst out laughing and said, in the broadest Milesian, 
 " Well, man, but it's quare how /ou could tell that." 
 Then I said, "By your English I hear you're Irish," 
 whereupon he laughed consumedly, and said what any 
 other well-balanced Irishman would have said 
 " Come and have a drink." 
 
 Now, that Irishman and I belonged to the same 
 race, somehow, but there's no word in our language, 
 to call that relationship by name. These English, 
 Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Australian, Canadian, American 
 people are all one tribe. We turn up our noses at 
 each other in fine weather ; but in bad weather we 
 
 all say D , and stick to one another like leeches. 
 
 Please let me call the crowd Englishers ! We all try 
 to speak English, don't we ? Well, these Englishers 
 are the most conceited people on the face of the 
 earth. They have the best laws, the best language, 
 and the best religion on earth, no matter where they 
 live. They take it for granted that all the world 
 outside of their circle is lost in the midst of barbar- 
 ism and idolotary. There is a wild and savage satis 
 faction in knowing that the Moslems are sending 
 missionaries to England now, and they are making 
 many converts. 
 
 Amongst these Englishers there are an enormous 
 number of sects, aye, and religions ; but the last one
 
 108 Australian Gosstp and Story. 
 
 is Spiritualism. That is a good religion, if people are 
 good, and nobody would throw stones at it if its dis- 
 ciples would behave themselves but they don't. 
 They set all the laws of the universe at defiance and 
 make such wild statements as to make an honest 
 man's hair stand on end. Now, I'm an honest man 
 at least as honest as I can afford to be in these times 
 and I want to investigate spiritualism. I want to 
 know what it means. But along comes a " friend of 
 the cause," like the reporter who is on the job in 
 Sydney now, and he write such infamous rot 
 that I never want to meet a spiritualist again. 
 Such writers do more to disgust the world with 
 spiritualism than all its enemies could ever do. There 
 are thousands of men like myself who are honestly 
 anxious to know what this dark, mystical, ghostly 
 religion means. It seems to deal with new forces, 
 that we all our lives have tried to reckon with, and 
 have come to believe in 
 
 " That fixed arithmic of the universe 
 Which meteth good for good and ill for ill, 
 Measure for measure unto deeds, words, thoughts, 
 Watchful, aware, implacable, unmoved." 
 
 Spiritualism pretends to deal with the occult 
 forces of the world, such as are governed 
 by the living spirits of long dead people. It pro- 
 fesses to conjure people from the abyssmal depths 
 where spirits bide, and hold communion with them, but 
 N hen men like myself want to investigate the matter 
 we are met either by the demand at the door for " a 
 guinea a sitting," or else by irrelevant trickery. 
 
 Here is this Sydney reporter investigating the 
 phenomena of the new religion, and he relates a 
 fearful lot of trash about a door that was pushed to 
 with considerable force. What has that got to do 
 with spirits ? There are more forces in the world than 
 I understand. W hat is electricity ? Herbert Spencer 
 says, and it is, surely, true, " The simplest phenom- 
 ena in their ultimate essence are unknowable." 
 What force shuts the door 1 ! What force rings the
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 109 
 
 bell 1 What is force ? What has this force to do 
 with spirits? 
 
 Then a crowd of them sat round a table with 
 ' Maggie," the medium, and the lights were put out, 
 and a tambourine went on the wallaby, ami the 
 reporter felt finger tips on the back of his hands, and 
 " Maggie " got a crack in the ear from a spo >k ! 
 Any spirit that would strike a woman in the dark is 
 not fit for decent society. It left a red mark on 
 " Maggie's " cheek, so it must have been a pretty 
 solid spook ; and if I've got to believe that, before I 
 can go to heaven, then I may as well look out for 
 an asbestos shroud at once. It is so utterly imbecile 
 that it is difficult to believe that Englishers 
 can be in the swim at all, but they are ! 
 
 This reporter who is now doing the spook 
 business in Sydney, tells a yarn about a little black 
 girl spook named " Cissy," who kissed a gentleman on 
 the forehead and left some sticky stuff on his face. It 
 was found to be chocolate cream ! Fancy a spook 
 eating chocolate cream 1 
 
 " Another story is told of a spirit, known as 
 ' Geordie,' who frequently materialises for the circle 
 frequented by my informant. On one occasion he 
 did so in a room on the private premises at the rear of 
 a stationer's shop in Melbourne, and, being supplied 
 with writing materials, wrote a letter addressed to a 
 resident in Sydney. He was then informed it would 
 be necessary to stamp the letter, and replied that he 
 had no money. A lady present produced sixpence, 
 whereupon ' Geordie ' walked into the front shop, and, 
 to the consternation of the assistant, who nearly 
 fainted at the sight of his strange customer, asked for 
 a two-penny stamp, which was given him and with 
 which he returned to the sitting-room. He was then 
 told he should have got fourpence change, which 
 ' Geordie ' went back for, and having obtained it gave 
 it to its owner. At a seance some twelve months 
 afterwards the same lady being present, 'Geordie' 
 again materialised, and was asked by the lady if he
 
 110 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 remembered her. ' Yes,' said he, ' I gave you your 
 change, didn't I f ' 
 
 That is certainly the worst yarn I ever saw in a 
 newspaper. It is such an awfully tough yarn that if 
 I were not a total abstainer I would go and have a 
 nip, just to enable me to refrain from swearing. If 
 there are such mutton-headed spooks as " Geordie " 
 kicking about the other world then hell has a new 
 terror added to its list. 
 
 Of course, a reporter is only human, and liable 
 to err, and is also open to sympathise with the wily 
 Hindoo who sang 
 
 " For who hath grieved when soft arms shut him safe, 
 
 And all life melted to a happy sigh, 
 
 And all the world was given in one soft kiss." 
 
 A reporter is sadly, softly, sweetly human, and 
 you never can tell for certain what he vill say or do; 
 but think of this fat head explaining the complex 
 phenomena of materialisation. He says that : 
 
 "Materialisation, that is the visible and substan- 
 tial presence of temporarily re-embodied spirits, is 
 said to be sometimes accomplished in a bright light, 
 either natural or artificial. 
 
 " The explanation of the method in which they 
 then become not only visible, but tangible, is that the 
 form or portion of the form (for sometimes it con- 
 sists of only head and bust) is composed of particles 
 substracted from the medium and other members of 
 the circle thus it is stated that a considerable loss 
 of weight is sustained by the medium during 
 materialisation, as tested by a weighing machine. 
 
 " It is averred that it is quite usual to weigh 
 the spirit forms, and that the weight corresponds to 
 the aggregate loss of weight sustained by the 
 members of the circle, paiticularly the medium ; thus, 
 supposing the normal weight of the latter to be, say, 
 7st. 61b., if weighed during materialisation she will 
 show a loss of 2st. or over, and only turns the scale 
 at perhaps 4st. 121b. or 4st. 131b., whilst the other
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. Ill 
 
 persons present will also lose weight, but in a less degree. 
 As to the drapery difficulty, that is met in a similar 
 way, the stuff surrounding the spirit forms being 
 similarly materialised from the particles of the cloth- 
 ing and other textile fabrics which may be in the 
 room, and I am assured that in apartments where 
 materialisation frequently takes place the curtains 
 ultimately get thin and attenuated by the loss of 
 material, a certain proportion of which is dissipated 
 in the surrounding space, and, therefore, permanently 
 lost to the original articles from which it was taken. 
 The same thing may apyly to the fleshy particles of 
 human beings laid under contribution, but we know, 
 of course, that living bodies have a power of recuper 
 ation, and of replacing atoms thrown off the body 
 by various natural means. 
 
 'The above is given as the explanation why the 
 drapery, in which the materialised forms are en- 
 wrapped, is usually of the simplest, character, 
 generally being merely folded round the figure in 
 classic fashion, although I am assured that oc- 
 casionally the forms appear in modern habiliments, 
 equal in appearance to the production of a fashionable 
 tailor or dressmaker, and sometimes adorned with 
 apparently valuable articles of jewellery. 
 
 "lam not aware of any of these latter having 
 been obtained and preserved, although I am told that 
 pieces of the drapery have been cut from the raiment, 
 and I have been shown locks of hair cut from the 
 heads of the spirit forms and preserved as 
 souvenirs. 
 
 " That is explained by the supposition that they 
 have the power of permanently materialising a 
 limited portion of their form and drapery." 
 
 After that some respectable spiritualist ought to 
 rise and smite this reporter hip and thigh. Perhaps 
 he is writing sarcastically, as it were, and is only 
 taking a rise out of the spiritualists ; but if so he 
 ought to be kicked for making fun of them. If he is 
 in earnest, then heaven help the press which has
 
 112 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 such a representative. Perhaps he is only making a 
 moc'cery of the whole thing, and may do some good, 
 for I think it was Horace who said 
 
 ' Men who are more impervious as a rule, 
 To slashing censure than bo ridicule." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 There was once a good Christian man whe had 
 resolved on devo'ing his life to the spiritual needs of 
 the ironworkers in one of England's dark corners. 
 He found that the people were as ignorant of Gospel 
 truths as the wild savages in far lands. He selected 
 one good, ignorant soul to whom he resolved to 
 teach the Bible story, and so he began with Adam and 
 Eve, and related the story of Creation. No book in 
 this wide world is more intensely interesting than the 
 Bible, and the pity of it is that most of us are so 
 ignorant concerning its beauties. Many of the 
 Bible stories startled the puddler very much, especi- 
 ally the one about Jonah. He said, " Must I believe 
 that?" 
 
 ' Well, said the pious man, "it is part of the 
 Bible narrative." 
 
 ' Oh, well," said the iron-worker with a sigh, 
 "goon." 
 
 Another day the teacher told him about Shad- 
 rach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were cast into 
 the fiery furnace. Now the puddler knew a good 
 deal about furnaces. That was his business, and so 
 he turned angrily on the pious chap and said " Do 
 you mean to say as that 'ere furnace was as 'ot as 
 mine f 
 
 " Seven times hotter," said the teacher. 
 
 " And they wasn't burned ? " 
 
 " Not the smell of fire upon their garments !
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 113 
 
 14 Now, that'll do you," said the puddler. " I 
 don't believe that yarn, nor I don't believe that fish 
 story neither." 
 
 That iron-worker represented a large number of 
 us. There is no sense in doubting one story simply 
 because you don't believe another, but we all do it, 
 just the same. When the spiritualists tell you one 
 yarn that is utterly unreasonable and unbelievable 
 you doubt their statements in other directions. Here 
 am I, a man very anxious to know the truth about 
 spiritualism. I've got real good friends who are 
 spiritualists, and I have no prejudices against it. I 
 don't like the idea of a fellow getting turned out of a 
 comfortable grave to come and thump on Sydney 
 furniture, or things like that ; but if it happened I'm 
 open to believe it. When I die I want to go to 
 where my loved ones are, because anywhere else 
 would be hell, and I don't want to be locked out 
 because I don't believe. I'll believe anything that 
 I'm able to believe, if it's necessary to do so in order 
 to go wi h my wife to where she's going ; but I can't 
 believe some things. 
 
 Some Sydney spook-hunters have got hold of a 
 newspaper man, and they are going to prove to him 
 that spiritualism is true. If they prove it to him, 
 they prove it to a large circle, for most of us want to 
 know the truth. It ought to be easy to prove a 
 thing like this, because if a spirit can materialise 
 out of the solid bodies about it, and sit on a pair cf 
 Lassetter's scales and weigh seven stone five pounds, 
 there shouldn't be any trouble about it. If a ghost 
 from the inane can walk about and shake hands, and 
 buy postage stamps and forget the change, it ought 
 to be easy to make all this manifest to a clear-eyed 
 reporter, or even to a fat-head. 
 
 Well, here's the proof. In the last issue of the 
 paper that is now on the job, there are two sworn 
 affidavits, witnessed and signed by a Sydney justice, 
 to the effect that spirits have been visiting a circle. 
 Not at all. John Ferguson makes affirmation on
 
 114 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 oath that a tambourine was placed on a woman's 
 arm, in the dark, while he held her arm ! The tam- 
 bourine had the drum broken before this happened, 
 but John Ferguson swears that this was a case of the 
 " passage of matter through matter." Mrs Annie 
 Mellon swears that John is right. 
 
 Look here John and Mrs. Mellon, I'll swear to 
 something else. When I was a small boy I saw 
 Professor Anderson borrow a man's plug hat and mix 
 a plum pudding in it. Then he cooked it, still in the 
 hat, and then he cut the pudding up and threw it to 
 us boys, and it was real good pudding, smoking hot, 
 and we ate it, and then he returned the hat to its 
 owner, and it was as nice and clean as ever it was. 
 That was done in the light, on the stage, before 
 hundreds of people. Talk about putting a broken 
 tambourine on a woman's arm in the dark ! Oh, 
 John, if you were to go and spend a summer after- 
 noon at Katoomba the buzz flies would eat you up, 
 you are so sweet and green ! 
 
 That same professor came on to the stage befoie 
 us all, in the broad glare of the stage light, and took 
 a cloth out of his pocket. He folded that cloth up 
 in a curious way, and said some awful conjuring 
 words over it, and then he took out of it a big globe 
 of water, with several gold-fish swimming about in 
 it ! Talk about a tambourine on a woman's arm in 
 the dark, eh ! One afternoon I was buzzing about 
 Yokohama, in Japan, drinking saki and winking the 
 other eye in the "teahouses," when I came across 
 some conjurors. Amongst other marvellous tricks 
 they brought out a long ladder, and a man put it 
 straight up on the ground and began to climb up it. 
 He balanced that ladder till he got to the top, and 
 then he began doing tricks on it. He was clever, 
 and the Japs applauded. When he was finished he 
 pulled up the ladder to where he stood, and set it up 
 again and went further up yet ; and he kept going 
 up into the sky till he went out of sight ; and, perhaps, 
 John and Mrs. Mellon will meet him in the land
 
 Spiritualistic Experiences. 115 
 
 where the golden melons grow. You never can 
 tell! 
 
 But what did the tambourine on the woman's 
 arm prove ? It must have been an important piece of 
 evidence, when they met and got two sworn declara- 
 tions for publication in a newspaper ! Did it prove 
 anything about spirits ? It proved, perhaps, that 
 Mrs. Mellon is smarter than John Ferguson. It 
 proved, perhaps, that poor John is open to be fooled ; 
 but it didn't prove one iota of what we want to know 
 It only proved that some modern men have no more 
 idea of the laws of evidence than the ancients had. 
 When Moses went before Pharaoh he was to prove by 
 a miracle that he had been sent by God, so he cast 
 down his rod before the Egyptian king, and, lo, it 
 became a serpent ! Aaron did the same thing ! but 
 so did the magicians of the court. Aaron's serpent 
 swallowed up the others; but Pharaoh didn't see 
 where the miracle came in. Then Moses smote the 
 water, and it turned to blood ; but the magicians 
 were able to do the same thing. Then Moses brought 
 up a crowd of frogs ; and so did the native magicians. 
 When Moses tried his hand on with filling the land 
 with lice the local miracle-workers failed ; but that 
 may have been because they were too patriotic. Any- 
 how, this fact stands out clear. Many conjurers of 
 to-day do far more wonderful Lhings than ever the 
 spooks do, so where's the miracle ? 
 
 Some of my friends believe in spirits. So do I 
 good spirits; but, then look at our ancestors, they 
 believed in things all right enough, but we know 
 to-day that they were wrong. There was a time in 
 " Merrie England " when they burned witches. If a 
 woman was old and ugly and lived alone and talked 
 to herself, that was prima jade evidence against her. 
 If she kept a black cat she was surely a witch ! The 
 good people of those far awa\ days believed her to be 
 in communication with the spirits of evil, and one 
 good way to test it was very popular : She was sewn 
 up in a sack and thrown into a horse pond. If she
 
 116 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 was a witch she floated, so they took her out and 
 burned her. If she sank to the bottom and didn't 
 come up again she wasn't a witch, and they could 
 fish her out and bury her ; but the results were very 
 similar to the old woman. We don't believe in that 
 kind of thing now, in spite of the fact that we still 
 have ugly old women who talk to themselves and 
 keep black cats. 
 
 We don't believe in evil spirits and broom-riding 
 witches, but John Ferguson and Mrs. Mellon want 
 us to believe some utterly unbelievable things. I'm 
 like the puddler. The story of the tambourine and 
 of the spook hitting the girl in the face makes me 
 doubt a lot of things. If I've got to believe in such 
 yarns before I can go where some of my friends think 
 they are going, then I may as well make up my mind 
 to go and join a lot of noble fellows in the stock trade, 
 who will, surely, fetch up in the same place as 
 myself ; and there we may meet Rudyard Kipling's 
 water-carrier, poor Gunga Din. Do you remember 
 the story of the poor Indian who was so good to the 
 soldiers? They knew that, as a heathen, he would 
 go to the bad place ; but there's something awful ly 
 pathetic and thoroughly English in the soldier's 
 words 
 
 " So I'll meet him later on 
 
 At the place where 'e is gone ; 
 
 Where it's always double drill and no canteen 
 
 'E'll be squatting on the coals 
 
 Givin' drink to poor damned souls, 
 
 An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din."
 
 The Human Eye. 117 
 
 urqan Bye. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 a man walks in his sleep his eyes are 
 shut. He can see things as well as if he 
 were awake ; he can climb up difficult 
 places and do all kinds of dangerous 
 tricks, yet he sees not truly ! He sees what he 
 thinks he sees. That is, he thinks he sees things, and 
 his open eye sees them, but he is not seeing 
 what he thinks he sees. Which complicated 
 proposition brings us back to the startling 
 statement that you do not see with your eyes, nor 
 hear with your ears, or feel with your fingers. The 
 ear contains a sensitive drum which records atmos- 
 pheric vibrations, and these are conveyed to the 
 brain and registered as impressions. You really 
 hear with your brain ; the ear is only the instrument 
 for conveying vibrations. So with your finger. The 
 telegraphic nerves in the finger wire to the brain 
 " that fire is hot," and the brain wires back " take 
 your finger away, you fool," and you doit ! But you 
 don't feel with your finger. Some tramps went into 
 a lime pit one night where it was warm. They fell 
 asleep and the fumes of the lime acted on their 
 brains. When they were found, their lega were 
 burned off; but they never felt the pain, because the 
 telegraphic lines were not working. That is, you 
 feel with your brain You see with your brains, too. 
 The somnambulist thinks he sees lakes and rivers and 
 mountains and all sorts of things, and his eyes are 
 open. But he has the wrong plate in his mental 
 camera, and he photographs what he thinks he sees. 
 Your eye is an optical instrument, a very delicate
 
 118 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 one and a very valuable one ; but it is lightly con- 
 sidered until it begins to fail ; then comes the 
 moan 
 
 " Oh, dying years ; oh, flying years ; 
 
 Oh, days of dimness, nights of sorrow. 
 Oh, failing sight ; oh, lessening light, 
 
 Oh, morn forlorn and sad to-morrow." 
 
 I once heard a man say whose eyes had failed 
 him, " I'd give both my legs to get one of my eyes 
 back." A man's eyesight is the most precious thing 
 he has on earth. I'd rather be deaf and dumb than 
 blind. Yet you see people abusing their eyesight in 
 the most shameless manner, but this comes from 
 ignorance mostly, because if there's one subject under 
 heaven concerning which people are more ignorant 
 than another it is the subject of eyesight. We know 
 less about our eyes, as a rule, than we think we know 
 about our souls. You can see people abusing their own 
 eyes in such a way that they ought to be punished 
 for cruelty to animals. The eye is exceedingly 
 delicate, a most wonderful optical instrument, re- 
 quiring the deepest knowledge to deal with, yet we 
 commonly buy our glasses from the tailor, the 
 grocer, or the ironmonger, or else from the man on 
 the corner, and we wonder why our eyes fail early. 
 Now I want to have a real, serious talk with a friend 
 of mine out in the bush, and it seems to me it ought 
 interest a lot of people, for most of us have eyes. This 
 friend of mine tackled me on a showground about 
 eyes, and we had a long yarn, in spite of the show, 
 and quite a crowd got interested in the subject, so I 
 want now to settle down to finish my story. You've 
 got to be personal in such a story, because well, 
 you've got to talk from experience. I like that old 
 idea of John Wesley's of a class meeting, where you 
 related your own personal experience. 
 
 The first " experience " I want to relate is that 
 of a lady. I know her very well, so you can take my 
 word for the facts. This lady was fairly strong and 
 healthy, but used to get the most frightful head-
 
 The Human Eye. 119 
 
 aches. They were put down to " billiousness " and 
 " indigestion " and sundry causes, until one day she 
 read some remarks I'd made on eyes, and she said, 
 " I wonder if there's anything the matter with my 
 eyes ?' She went to a clever oculist, and you need 
 to be sure who you go to, for there's quacks in that 
 business as well as in every other ! I must tell you 
 something about that later if I get the chance. The 
 oculist examined her eyes with some weird and 
 wonderful ins ruments, and then said, " I don't 
 wonder at you having headaches, but I'll cure you." 
 Now that sounded like quackery, but he turned out a 
 pair of nose pincers for reading that were not quite 
 satisfactory. He wanted the lady to wear spectacles, 
 but she refused point blank. You know why ! It's 
 foolish, of course but, still, people are that way, 
 especially women ! He made her nose pincers (pince- 
 nez, ahem !), and she said they didn't suit ; but he 
 said they did, because the machine that he used was 
 correct. She kept on using the glasses and reading 
 with them, but after a few weeks she gave it up and 
 read without them. Then her headaches came back, 
 and ehe made a discovery ! Those glasses had cured 
 her headaches, but she never missed the aches till she 
 gave up the glasses, and they began again. She 
 took to the glasses mighty quick, and always wears 
 them now. There's more trouble from bad eyes, from 
 defective vision, than anybody has any idea of, 
 except doctors, more especially eye doctors. 
 
 I'll tell you a strange thing. I've got bad eyes. 
 I had an accident with one, and the results were 
 that I expected to lose both, but by a streak of luck 
 and a good constitution I pulled through. But 
 my eyes are of different focus, and one of them is 
 astigmatic. I'll tell you what that is by and bye. 
 My glasses are peculiar. When I leave home I've got 
 to carry a spare pair along for fear of accidents. 
 I can't get a pair ready made. Well, one night, some 
 years ago, I sat in a class-room, where the teacher 
 wrote formulae on the blackboard. A young fellow
 
 120 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 sat next to me who never could read them, and kept 
 asking me about them. One night he said, " May 
 I look through your glasses ? " " Certainly," and 
 lo, he could see first-class. He'd had bad eyes all his 
 life and didn't know it. Soon he had a pair of 
 glasses of his own, but when I looked through them I 
 couldn't see a thing ; all was blurred and mixed up. 
 Yet he could use mine. Then it dawned upon me 
 that eyes were delicate instruments. There are more 
 complex troubles with eyes than you could write in 
 a month, but I must tell you one story. A young 
 Australian lady had something wrong with her eyes. 
 She went to an alleged "oculist" who put some- 
 thing in the way of a liquid into them. She suffered 
 frightful torment, but he said it would come out 
 all right in the end. Then he went on his holidays 
 and the girl had to go to another doctor. He 
 examined her eyes and said, " My poor girl, you will 
 never see the sun again ; that stuff that has been put 
 into your eyes has ruined them." And the girl had 
 no remedy. She must live out her life in blindness 
 because a certificated quack blundered. That's what 
 makes me so careful about whom I ^o to with my eyes. 
 But we'll have more talk on the subject later. 
 
 CHAP PER II. 
 
 Not long ago I was visiting a country hospital, 
 and saw a man lying in a bed with his head covered 
 up. The doctor took me over to him, and when the 
 patient heard the voice of the medico he uncovered 
 his head, for he was not asleep. He was a young 
 man suffering from " Sandy Blight," and the si^ht of 
 his eyes was enough to make you remember " Sandy 
 Blight " for ever more. It is one of the horrible dis- 
 eases that the eye of the bushman is liable to ; one 
 of the common diseases ; one of the diseases that is
 
 The Human Eye. 121 
 
 put down to the " visitation of God." If there is any 
 one phrase more than another that annoys and 
 worries me, and tends to make me atheistic, it is that 
 one, " the visitation of God." My God doesn't visit 
 people with horrible blights, or take mean re- 
 venges on the chaps out in the back blocks. I 
 wouldn't feel so bad if people said that " Sandy 
 Blight " was a " visitation of the devil," but even 
 that would be a libel on Beelzebub, for as was well 
 said in the Bigelow papers 
 
 " I du believe that 1 should give, 
 
 Wut's his'n unto Caesar ; 
 Fur it's by him I move and live, 
 
 From him my bread an' cheese air." 
 
 It's no use stopping to argue about that now, but it's 
 not a fair deal to blame God for what we bring on 
 ourselves through our crime or ignorance. 
 
 This young man who lay in the bed at the 
 country hospital was suffering from " Sandy 
 Blight." His eyelids were red and inflamed, and 
 swelled up so that he couldn't see. His tortures were 
 something frightful, because the primary "blight" 
 had led to ulceration of the cornea, and he was nearly 
 blind, even if the swelling of his eyelids had not shut 
 out the light. What I want to do is to try and 
 explain in simple language what was the matter with 
 that young fellow. Those who are not interested in 
 eyes can skip this, for I want to talk solemnly and 
 earnestly to the boys out back. 
 
 " Sandy Blight " is really what is known as 
 granulation of the eye-lids, induced either by cold or 
 by the introduction of foreign matter. It begins by 
 a feeling of having a grain of sand on the eyelid a 
 sore, worriting, horrible feeling. Then, if not at- 
 tended to, you begin to feel as if you had more grains 
 of sand, and every time your eyelid moves it scrapes the 
 bright, glassy part of the eye. Nobody knows the 
 torture of that, except those who've had it, so it's no 
 use trying to explain it ; but those of us who have 
 had the " Sandy Blight " can understand, and those
 
 122 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 who are liable to get it can remember. When the first 
 germs appear you can cure it as easily as taking your 
 dinner, if you understand what it is you have got. If 
 you take a simple antiseptic like Boracic Acid, and 
 put three grains to an ounce of pure water, and wash 
 the eye with it (say a small teaspoonf ul of acid to a pint 
 of water) you'll be saved. But that has got to be done 
 early. This young fellow in the hospital had been 
 suffering from bad eyes for two years before he 
 reached the doctor's hands. The minute grains on 
 the eyelid, which are really living germs, had not been 
 washed off. They had grown, multiplied, enlarged 
 and hardened. You couldn't wash them off now, 
 There is no remedy for them when they reach that 
 stage, except to burn them off with nitrate of silver. 
 The man who uses nitrate of silver onthehnman 
 eye needs to know what he is about. I'm afraid of 
 the amateur doctor ! When I was a boy a carpenter 
 took in hand to pull a tooth for me with a pair of 
 pincers. Tom was a good carpenter, but he was no 
 dentist ! He broke the tooth, and I had a picnic. 
 Then we both knew that carpenters can't always 
 draw teeth. Don't you let any amateurs fool with your 
 eyes. When there's anything the matter with your 
 eyes go to the best doctor you can get, or else come 
 right on to Sydney. I never go to an oculist now, 
 because I know what's the matter with my eyes. I 
 go to a first-class optician, like Barraclough in 
 Sydney, and get him to fix me up ; but if there was 
 anything organically wrong with the eyes that glasses 
 wouldn't set right he'd send me to a doctor. But I 
 never go to a doctor. They're good things to have 
 about though, and a first-class doctor is a boon to 
 any community. 
 
 This young fellow in the hospital had suffered the 
 grains to grow and grow, and as they grew they worked 
 the cornea of the eye, until it grew dim. just as a 
 piece of glass would do with constant scratching. 
 Then came ulceration of the cornea, and when he 
 came to the hospital one eye was nearly done for, and
 
 The Human Eye. 123 
 
 the other was not far behind. In order to save his 
 eyes he had to have the granulations burned, and 
 what he suffered in that bed was enough to cleanse 
 his soul from all the sios of a long life- time, if suffer- 
 ing cleanses at all, which I doubt. But he could 
 have escaped all this torment if he had only known 
 what it was that afflicted him early, or if he had gone 
 to a doctor at once. But doctors don't hang their 
 shingles on every gum tree in the bush and poor 
 people suffer a lot in hope of it passing off without 
 medical advice. People don't always know what to 
 do, or they neglect to do even what they know they 
 ought to do, and when torture and blindness comes 
 they say it is a " visitation of God." 
 
 This " Blight " is infectious at certain stages, 
 and in some districts it is very common. But it 
 belongs specially to dry and dusty places, where men 
 are galloping about after stock or where they are 
 handling sheep a lot. We are not so liable to it in 
 towns, where there are water-carts and paved streets, 
 but out on the Barcoo and the Never Never, and all 
 the dry places of the land it is horribly common. When 
 the air is so full of dust that it is scarcely safe to 
 drive, the eyes get filled up with uncleauness, and 
 the germs of the '' Blight " are frequently there. The 
 scorching heat dries up the flood-waters of the eye, 
 which are there for cleansing purposes, and the 
 microbe gets its first chance on the soft, red tissues 
 the mucous membrane of the eye, and if you don't 
 get an an'.iseptic wash then, you're in for it. I'm in 
 the hands of the optician now, getting new head- 
 lights, so eyes are a deep and awful subject to me at 
 present. In fact, they always are, so it seemed a 
 good chance for me to say what I've said now, and 
 some of you will find it worth remembering.
 
 124 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Some people believe in fortune telling ; some 
 don't. The other day an artist said to me, " that 
 man cheated me out of five pounds ; but I was a fool 
 for trusting him ; his eyes are too close together." 
 As I believe in character reading, and as I also be- 
 lieve that " whatever a man soweth, that shall he also 
 reap," you may say that I believe in fortune telling, 
 eh ! That artist's opinion coincided with an article 
 of settled belief that is part of my mental stock-in- 
 trade. Eyes denote character, and eyes are subject 
 to mental and physical laws, and in a sense there- 
 fore to moral laws. Shifty eyes are bad. I 
 like people to look me straight in the face when 
 they are talking to me. You can tell a fearful lot of 
 things by people's eyes. But very few people have 
 got good eyes. I think it was the great Helmholtz 
 who said that if an optician sent him an optical 
 instrument as faulty as a human eye, he would re- 
 turn it and refuse to pay for it. There may be some- 
 thing in that, but the philosophy of it is too deep 
 for us just now. 
 
 People get head-aches because their eyes are not 
 optically correct. They work for a while and get 
 weary, and thinking that it is the mind that is 
 vrong, they get disgusted and change their work ; 
 but, really, it is their eyes that are wroug. If they 
 find that out, they go to a grocer, or an iron- 
 monger to get a pair of spectacles, and then wonder 
 why things are still wrong. Eyes are delicate and 
 complicated things, and you should never trust any- 
 body with the care of them except a well-trained, 
 able and certificated man. " Them's my sentiments." 
 
 You take my eyes. One of them is of a different 
 focus to the other, owing to a cold I caught sitting 
 on a bridge near midnight, years and years ago. I
 
 The Human Eye. 125 
 
 nearly went blind over that little affair. Then, one 
 of my eyes is " astigmatic." That is, the glassy sur- 
 face isn't even. If you look into a spoon you see 
 your face elongated. That is, because you are look- 
 ing into a polished surface that is uneven. There 
 are mirrors made to distort you in a humorous 
 manner. One shows you long and thin, while another 
 shows you short and broad. There are mirrors to 
 distort you, because they are cheap, but they are not 
 humorous. Your eye, if not true, distorts things, 
 and that is " astigmatism," but that can be corrected 
 by spectacles made by an optician who understands 
 his business. My belief is that thousands of people 
 suffer from their eyes, in ignorance of the cause of 
 their troubles. If everybody who needed glasses 
 wore them, there would be very few without them. 
 There was a fox had his tail cut off in a trap, and he 
 called all the foxes together and tried to persuade 
 them that they would look better without tails than 
 with them. I wear glasses, but I'm not arguing on 
 the fox's basis ! 
 
 The eye is a wonderful instrument and has 
 wonderful powers of accommodation, A good eye 
 can read the finest print, or see very small objects, 
 and can then see the dark markings on the moon, 
 which is 240,000 miles away. It can pick out the 
 face of a friend across the street, and see the 
 twinkling of a star which is 40 billion miles distant. 
 You can't do things like that with a telescope or a 
 microscope, or any artificial optical instrument. I 
 had an old friend once, named Bill Jones, who 
 carried three pairs of spectacles. One pair was for 
 reading, one pair was for looking at things afar off, 
 and the third pair was for ordinary use about the 
 house. Bill was always short of one pair somehow, 
 and then he'd make remarks, such as never were 
 printed in a school book. He was a good man too, 
 except when he lost his glasses ! Now, my 
 spectacles are eurious, I'm short-sighted in one eye, 
 I'm astigmatic in one eye, and my eyes lack the
 
 126 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 power of accommodation, so that I need one pair of 
 glasses for long sight and another pair for writing. But 
 I couldn't possibly wear several pairs of glasses, so I 
 have all the requirements ground in the one lens. 
 There's about four different sights in my one pair of 
 glasses. The upper part is to see far off, and I can see 
 splendidly. The lower part is i o work with, and my 
 eyes are as good as a boy's, so you can understand 
 that when I take to talking about glasses, I speak as 
 one having authority. You can't see anything 
 different in nay glasses from the ordinary ones unless 
 you look very close. I ought to shout for the man 
 who made my glasses of course, for they are a triumph 
 of optical skill. It was H. A. Barraclough, 371 
 George Street, Sydney, and he deserves all I can say 
 of him. I'm proud of his work. 
 
 If a man can'o read ordinary type at 8 inches or 
 closer, then there's something \ he matter with his 
 eyes As a man grows older he needs to hold the 
 print further and further away. With my old- 
 fashioned glasses I wrote at a distance of 18 inches. 
 With the new improved four barrelled glasses I work 
 at 14 inches. With the old glasses I read at 19 
 inches, with the new ones at 14- inches. It's 
 wonderfully interesting to measure the distances that 
 people read at ; but most of us never think of such 
 tilings till our eyes begin to play up with us. But 'tis 
 trouble that opens our mental eyes very often. We 
 belong to a race that only shows its best in times of 
 trouble, that needs for its fullest development 
 
 " The blood of the storm, and the blessing 
 Wrapped in the rolling of vapours, and born 
 Of the sun and the sea." 
 
 The world's great men have given their be^t 
 thought to this matter of vision, and no subject ou 
 earth is more worthy of it. It was Professor Javal, 
 of Paris, who invented an instrument for examining 
 the eye. It ia called the ophthalometer. I'd des- 
 cribe it, only that my powers of description are 
 too feeble. Here is a picture of it :
 
 The Human Eye. 127 
 
 The patient sits at one side of the big wheel and 
 places his chin on a rest and looks at a point that he 
 is told to look at. A strong light is thrown into his 
 eye, and the optician marks of the defects in the eye 
 on the machine. There is nothing left to cha ce 
 If the optician knows his business, that ophthalo- 
 meter will tell him how the power of the eye is out of 
 gear, and how far it is out. I was measured by this 
 wonderful instrumt nt, and when we had finished, I 
 shifted the optician to the patient's place, and had 
 a look at his optics. An eye is a wonderful thing ! 
 When I was a youngster I used to look at salmonb' 
 eyes on the river bank, and wonder, awesomely, how 
 it was they could see with such queer shiny balls as 
 those eyes. Bu r . when I looked through that 
 ophthalome'er, and saw the red, living fleshy tissues, 
 and the pulsating life of ihe optician therein, it filled 
 me with a more knowledgeable awe. I didn't know 
 which to admire most the miracle of the human eye. 
 or the skill of Javal for inventing such a machine.
 
 128 Australian Gossip and Storv. 
 
 The more I see of the science of optics, the more I 
 wonder at the way our eyes endure, considering the 
 strain we put upon them, and the ignorance of most of 
 us concerning them. I'd like to say a lot more on 
 the subject, for I haven't touched many of the points 
 that I had resolved on discussing ; but if any of you 
 who are interested in eyes, write to me, I'll do the 
 best I can to answer any queries that you may want 
 to propound.
 
 Our British Ships. 129 
 
 Bur British Ships. 
 
 many days ago a party of us went to see 
 the great German ship, the " Friedrich 
 der Grosse," in the dry dock at Cockatoo 
 Island. One man in the launch [that we 
 journeyed in was full of enthusiasm for the " Beauti- 
 ful Harbour." He talked with pride and pleasure of 
 its vastness, its depth, its beauty, and of the 
 marvellousness of a great ship like the " Friedrich," 
 coming so many miles from the sea to this dry dock. 
 Said I : " You're the first New South Wales man I 
 ever met who praised up our harbour." Then some 
 of the passengers laughed and said : " He's a 
 Victorian !" Then I laughed. People accuse us of 
 boasting about our harbour ; but we don't ; it's the 
 visitors who do it. "Wo belong to that pig-headed, 
 colonising, nil admirari British race that never sees 
 glory in its own. We Australians rarely see any 
 good in an Australian poet, artist, musician or 
 scholar until the folk beyond the sea have caught a 
 glimpse of their glory. We're built that way ! But 
 we love another deep down in our hearts, and we 
 think our own race the best after all. Many 
 generations of fighting ancestors have left their 
 impress on us, and we love our own with 
 
 " The faith of men that ha' brothered men 
 
 By more than easy breath ; 
 And the eyes o' men ha' read wi' men 
 
 In the open books of death." 
 
 We went up to the big dry dock on Cockatoo 
 Island and saw the great German steamship therein. 
 She is over 10,000 tons gross tonnage, and she is a big 
 ship. Some of our people went into ecstacies over
 
 130 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 her ; but I didn't, because she was " made in 
 Germany " It may be that on the morrow we will 
 be at war with the Germans over the Boers, or over 
 the new German settlement in China, or over the 
 monkey tricks of the Emperor William, so I'm not 
 prepared to enthuse over German ships. Perhaps 
 that's because I'm narrow and insular and ignorant 
 but, perhaps, it is because I lore free England, and 
 have travelled this wide world over and have seen the 
 crushing power of military despotisms, and so my 
 heart turns ever to the dear old Carline wife in the 
 North Sea, of whom Kipling sings 
 
 " Home they come from all the ports, 
 
 The living and the dead ; 
 The good wife's sons came home again 
 
 For her blessing on their head." 
 
 We have steamships carrying our own flag that 
 beat the Nordeutcher Lloyds out of the field. We 
 have ships that are bigger and belter and British. 
 But our people are idolaters and bow down and 
 worship at the shrine of cheapness, and they sail in 
 French and German ships to save a shilling, because 
 the French and German Government subsidise their 
 steamers to enable them to steal our trade. We send 
 our wool and our freights by foreign boats to save a 
 sovereign, and yet we sing patriotic songs and blab 
 about our love for the old land Bah ! When war 
 does come, we'll ask which of our people have 
 travelled with the enemy, and which of our people 
 have shipped their goods on the lines of the foemen, 
 and then we'll hiss. T'were all as well to do it now ; 
 I'm a " jingo" all right; I confess it, and I'm not 
 greatly ashamed of it. 
 
 One of our passengers on thai, day said the 
 " Langton Grange " carried more cargo than the 
 mighty " Friedrich der Grosse." I was surprised and 
 pleased, for the " Grange " boats come in and out of 
 our ports and no man makes remarks thereon. They 
 don't go into our dry docks, either ; they don't need 
 to ; they were built in Ould Ireland ! The nett
 
 Our British Ships. 131 
 
 registered tonnage of the " Langton Grange " is 
 3844 tons. How could she carry more cargo than 
 the 10,000 ton German ship ? This register business 
 breaks me up. The carrying capacity of the 
 " Langton Grange" is 9100 tons ! When she goes 
 through the Suez Canal she pays on her registered 
 tonnage, and that is what she carries below decks, 
 but the " Grange " has vast covered in houses on 
 deck, on which she does not pay. Her registered 
 tonnage is 3844 tons ; her dead lifting capacity is 
 just belcw 10,000 tons. She is not a passenger boat 
 like the big German ; she has lovely cabins and can 
 carry a few passengers, but she is first and foremost a 
 cargo boat, and we make no fuss about her. Do you 
 know why 1 Because, like the " Beautiful Harbour," 
 she belongs to us ! That's why ! She comes over 
 here from London and discharges her vast cargo and 
 then goes up North and takes in frozen meat at 
 Boweii and Gladstone. Then she comes along the 
 coast gathering up wool, and meat, and tallow and 
 all sorts. When she has a few thousand tons aboard 
 she goes off to the River Plate and fills up with hun- 
 dreds of live bullocks for the London market, and 
 nobody makes any fuss about her. She's English, 
 that's why, and we never can see any glory in our 
 own. We can't help it. That's the way we're 
 built. 
 
 That " Langton Grange " can carry in her re- 
 frigerated holds 100,000 carcases of sheep, or 2200 
 tons of frozen beef ! If you say that quick it won't 
 sound much, but if you stop to think it's an awful 
 lot. I don't believe I ever saw 100,000 sheep at one 
 time in my life. When you begin to think about it 
 you imagine that nobody else did either, don't you 1 
 That is what has abolished famine in the kingdoms of 
 the earth. You can transport the flocks and herds of 
 the pastoral lands to the crowded streets of the 
 manufacturing cities, so famine has ceased to be. 
 
 When I begin to think about what ships like 
 the " Langton Grange " carry it makes me tired. She
 
 132 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 can carry 16,000 bales of wool besides the frozen 
 meat. Do any of you folks cut as much as that, eh ? 
 Sixteen thousand ! She carries in her bunkers 1240 
 tons of coal, and never a cob of it visible on deck. 
 The Langton Grange is a floating warehouse, a palace, 
 a miracle, a ship worth admiring, and she was not 
 " made in Germany." Ships like her come and go in 
 our big harbour, and we take no heed of them ; they 
 are the servants of the mightiest race on earth, and 
 we were born into royalty, and so hold cheaply the 
 ships and the glory of our nation ! But we rave over 
 foreigners. That's our little way. There's something 
 very good about it, too, when you ccme to think 
 of it. 
 
 This " Langton Grange " belongs to the Houlder 
 Line, which has a fleet of ten ships, three of them as 
 big as this ' Grange," and the tonnage of the fleet is 
 over sixty-six thousand tons. But the Houlder Line 
 makes no fuss. If you go into the Sydney office and 
 meet the managing director, Mr. Linley, you would 
 take him for an ordinary Englishman. He puts on 
 no side, and you'd never think he was boss of a big 
 world-shifting concern like this. But that's the 
 trouble with the race ; they don't know their own 
 magnificent capacity. God bless them ! 
 
 That "Langton Grange," carrying over 9000 
 tons, makes her way to England at the rate of 11 
 knots an hour, week in and week out, voyage out, 
 voyage home, year after year. Her grand, modern 
 machinery makes me think of the cry of the " thrust 
 block " in McAndrew's hymn 
 
 " ' Not unto us the praise, or man not unto us the praise !' 
 Now, a'together, hear them lift their lesson their's an' 
 
 mine ; 
 
 1 Law, Order, Duty and Restraint ; Obedience, Discipline !' 
 Mill, forge an' try-pit taught them that when roarin' they 
 
 rose. 
 An' whiles I wonder if a soul was gied them wi' the blows." 
 
 I'd like to tell you some more about our English 
 ships, but my space is full ; yet I wonder at our own 
 people sailing in ships that were " made in Germany."
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 133 
 
 Jpip te "Tasmania. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 glad we were to leave Sydney wharf on 
 a hot, sticky, Saturday morning, bound 
 away on a 600 miles trip, to the country of 
 the Tasmanians. Life had been so fevered 
 of late, that it seemed as though it would be glorious 
 to have nothing to do for a few days, nothing but to 
 eat and drink and loaf and sleep and watch 
 the sea. It would be grand to go without a lead 
 pencil, or an intention, and never take a note, or 
 write a line, but we didn't make ourselves, and good 
 resolutions have no more effect on somo people than 
 water has on a duck's back. 
 
 We had nobody to see us off, it's best to go 
 that way if you can, but there was a rare crowd on 
 that steamer. We knew a lot of them, of course, for 
 this is a very little world, yet there was a crowd 
 to wonder at. As we steamed down past Garden 
 Island, a tall aristocratic-looking lady stood on the 
 starboard rail, waving her handkerchief to somebody 
 ashore. Still she stood and still she waved, as we 
 passed Clark Island, Darling Point and Shark Island, 
 and then she burst into tears and ran away down 
 below. We saw her no more on that trip. She 
 wasn't mad either, shews only broken-hearted. Do you 
 know why she was leaving Sydney, or why her soul 
 was full of the bitterness that made her independent 
 of the judgement of strangers ? I don't, but I 
 wanted to weave a story round her, and I was sorry 
 that I'd vowed not to write. But that woman was 
 just like the rest of us. She had a story to her ! So 
 have we all, because we're human.
 
 134 Australian Gosstp and Story. 
 
 As we passed out by the Hornsby Lighthouse 
 a big paddle steamer bound for an excursion to the 
 Hawkesbury River, came out just after us, growded 
 with gay passengers. The sea came rolling gently 
 in through the heads, and the paddle steamer began 
 to heave, and our passengers on the Oonah began to 
 steal away to safe places. It does me good to get 
 out on to the world of waters. I love the sea, and 
 its everlasting, deathless motion appeals to me as 
 nothing else does. Death, Time and the Sea are the 
 mighty servants of Eternity. They are the scene- 
 shifters for life's tragedy. They not only arrange the 
 pictures for the play, but they change the audience 
 as well. One time the play is in Atlantis, and the 
 human mites work out their little lives in pride and 
 woe, then Death and Time and the Sea cover Atlantis, 
 with oblivion, and the tragedy is carried on at 
 Babylon, at Athens, at Rome, at London, in Aus- 
 tralia, and Atlantis is but a vague tradition. As we 
 steamed out from Sydney Heads we saw the surf rolling 
 gently 'into the Gap, where it reared and thundered 
 years agone with the sad relics of the mortals who 
 sailed on the Dunbar. As we passed the sandhills 
 at Bondi, we seemed far, far from civilization, but 
 then we came to where the Sydney dead sleep in the 
 Waverley Cemetery. It looked weird, uncanny, aw- 
 ful. From our distance it looked like a rough patch 
 of land as rough as the skin of a thorny pineapple. 
 But every light-coloured speck was a tombstone, and 
 every tombstone stood for a human tragedy, for I 
 looked into some of the graves there myself and 
 knew some of the stories. But now we stood afar off, 
 on the deck of a steamer, on the heaving, never- 
 resting, merciless sea, and we could watch how time 
 was helping Deatli to bring all the human ones of 
 Sydney to Waverley. Life looks very different to 
 you when you're on the sea, gazing at a cemetery ! 
 If we could only stop to think? But we can't. It's 
 such a hard business this making a living, that we- 
 have no time to live. We haven't time to lift our
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 135 
 
 eyes above the ash heaps, and it took such a lot of 
 worry to raise the money for this trip, that a lot of 
 of us never saw the Sinaitic glory of the heads, and 
 the cliffs and the sea, and the sky and the cemetery : 
 
 " If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
 And find not Sinai 'tis thy soul is poor ; 
 There towers the mountain of the voice no less 
 Which he who seeks shall gnd ; but he who bends 
 Interest on manner still and mortal ends 
 Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore." 
 
 Soon after we passed Waverley and Coogee and 
 the home places, we passed a great big ship heading 
 across our track. She had every stitch of plain sail 
 set, and lay slogging at the waves in a helpless way, 
 for the wind was very, very light, and of very little 
 service to such a big ship. She was a big ship when 
 she lay at the wharf. She was a big ship measured 
 by other ships, but she looked such a speck of a 
 vessel when measured by the vastness of the sea or 
 even by the miles of rugged cliffs that reached along 
 on our starboard side, and she looked so utterly 
 helpless as she lay there. Soon we passed her and 
 she was but a speck on the horizon, a poor, pitiful 
 little speck that wouldn't be missed if she went right 
 down at once ! She wouldn't be missed by us, may- 
 be, but what about those who had loved ones aboard 
 of her 1 That ship is the centre of the universe to 
 some. She is a little world, with a very important 
 captain, and a swagger mate, and a bully second 
 mate, and a buck bo'sun, and perhaps a swell " mid- 
 shipman," who wears a brass band on his cap and 
 anchor buttons on his coat, and thinks himself a 
 little almighty when he's ashore. Tra-la-la. How 
 God in heaven must laugh at the style we little 
 mortals put on, eh ? You should have seen us on the 
 Oonah ! They had good tucker, and lots of accom- 
 modation, even for the big Christmas crowd that was 
 going over. When we first got out, and the big, 
 deep see moved itself, there was a feeling of common
 
 136 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 brotherhood, especially among the women. But 
 when the wind died away altogether, and the sea grew 
 very calm, they began to manifest the flesh and the 
 devil. They put on swagger frocks and bonnets, and 
 they jumped each other's seats at table, and looked as 
 stuck up if they were the bosses of the universe. You 
 soon begin to find out who's who on a ship. Poor little 
 miserable sinners that we are, ain't we ? 
 
 There's some who were sea sick all the trip, in 
 spite of good weather, good tucker, and civil stewards. 
 That's hat makes me tired. I can't for the life of 
 me understand human stomachs. If we were half as 
 smart as we think we are, we'd freeze people, or 
 hypnotise people, when they went aboard ship, 
 if they wanted it, and take them across utterly 
 unconscious, then thaw them out when they arrive, 
 or de hypotnise them. It would be a grand thing for 
 people with weak stomachs. They could put on their 
 jewels and best clothes and things ; be chilled and 
 laid in a bunk, and wait there in state till the ship 
 was tied up at the wharf ready to go ashore. It 
 wauld save a lot of trouble. I get sea-sick if it's 
 rough, but my sickness takes the form of hunger. I'd 
 never want to be chilled or frozen, for I enjoy the 
 great deep and its mighty tossings ; but we are a 
 laggard race, in that we still allow people to suffer in 
 sea trips. I meant to have told you something about 
 Tasmania, but here's this yarn long enough, and I'm 
 not there yet. Never mind, the editor must be patient, 
 and I'll tell you about it later. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 When I set out for Tasmania I sought far and 
 wide for a guide book, and got one ; but it was full of 
 facts. I hate facts ! Like the multiplication table, 
 they have their uses, of course, but I wanted to know 
 something of the history of the place, something of 
 the romance of the Island, and the guide book only
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 137 
 
 gave distances, tariffs, and things like that. Tas- 
 mania is to me a wonderful land a land of romance 
 and weird happenings. My first recollection of 
 Tasmania are interwowen with the love of Abel 
 Jansen Tasman, and as there exists a good deal of 
 mystery about him, I'll tell you the yarn, as I remember 
 it. About the year 1640 the Dutch Governor of 
 Java was named Anthony Van Dieman, and he had 
 a sweet Dutch daughter named Maria. She had a 
 sailor lover named Tasman, and he wanted to do 
 something grand to win her hand. The Dutch, in 
 those days, were the great sea folk, the exploring, 
 trading, colonising people of the earth, as our people 
 are to-day. The Dutch-India Company was anxious 
 to explore the southern seas, and many ships under 
 able commanders, were sent out to find new lands. 
 Abel Jansen Tasman left Batavia in August, 1642, 
 in the little ship " Heemskirk," accompanied by his 
 brother Gerritt, in the still smaller ship " Zeehan." 
 Abel was a pious chap, as was the fashion of his day, 
 and when a man is pious and in love, he is armed to 
 face the world, the flesh and the devil. When he 
 sailed away for unknown land and seas, he wrote in 
 his log book, " May God Almighty be pleased to give 
 his blessing to this voyage. Amen ! " 
 
 On November 24, 1642, he sighted Tasmania, at 
 what we now call Point Hibbs, and he named the 
 new country, not after himself, but after his best 
 girl, "Van Dieman's Land." He sailed along the 
 coast, and reached Storm Bay. He anchored in 
 Fredrik Hendrik Bay, and he very nearly discovered 
 the harbour where Hobart stands now, but a gale of 
 wind drove him off, and he sailed on and on until he 
 discovered New Zealand. He named an island after 
 his darling, " Maria Island," and the record of his 
 visit is strong on the land now, though later men 
 altered it to bear his name, instead of his girl's. It 
 was altered to Tasmania. I hope he got back safely 
 to Batavia to marry his sweetheart, and lived long and 
 died happy. He was a good Dutchman.
 
 138 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 When I came on deck on a Monday morning and 
 saw the basaltic, organ-pipe masses of Cape Raoul, 
 over 250 years later, I wondered how he succeeded. 
 That's the kind of yarn I would have liked to read, 
 but it said nothing about it in my guide book. You 
 would have thought that the Dutch would have come 
 over and taken possession of Tasmania then, but they 
 didn't. Nobody seemed to take any notice of the 
 discovery, and Sir Joseph Banks found Tasman's 
 diary last century and took it to England, where it is 
 now. You see, all men were interested in the " New 
 World " about that time, for it was only in 1620 that 
 the " Pilgrim Fathers " landed on the 
 
 " Bleak New England shore," 
 
 seeking that freedom to worship God which was 
 deniedthem in England. America was the centre of 
 observation, and that must be the reason why 
 Tasmania was neglect r d. Then, too, it was con- 
 sidered to be part of Australia, that great " South 
 Land of the Holy Spirit," which nobody seemed to 
 care to colonise, for its bleakness and barrenness 
 and generally poverty-stricken look. 
 
 It was 1794 when Captain Hayes discovered and 
 named the Derwent, and it was 1796 before the 
 gallant Bass named the straits that separate Australia 
 from Tasmania. Two years later, in Governor King's 
 time, the little sloop Norfolk, 25 tons burden, built 
 at Norfolk Island, was sent on an exploring expedition 
 from Sydney, and Flinders did a grand thing he 
 named two mountains after Abel Jansen Tasman's 
 little ships, the Heemskirk and the Zeehan. Did 
 you ever hear talk of the Zeehan mine ? That recalls 
 to me the Dutchman's love story, but it only suggests 
 dividends to some people. 
 
 In 1800 the island was taken possession of by 
 Governor King, for Britain, and in 1803 they shipped 
 a lot of convicts over, who were nearly starved to 
 death, for nobody seemed to be able to make much 
 out of the lovely little island. We say " little "
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 139 
 
 island, but it's jolly near as big as Scotland or 
 Ireland, and those two places have made their mark 
 in the world. Tasmania contains over 26,000,000 
 square miles of the finest land on the face of God's 
 earth, and Scotland has only about 30,000,000 square 
 miles, and there's a lot of Scotch and Irish people in 
 Tasmania, who seemed determined that their adopted 
 land shall be as great, as rich and as important as 
 the old lands across the sea. 
 
 The history of Tasmania is the history of all our 
 colonies. The first crowd that landed was a poor 
 sample, and they did just what our people always do, 
 they set up a rum shop and took to quarrelling 
 amongst themselves. In 1811 Governor Macquarie 
 crossed over from the mother colony of New South 
 Wales a distance of over 600 miles and chalked 
 out the town that was to be. He called Liverpool, 
 street after the Minister of the day, Lord Liverpool. 
 He called one street after himself he was great on 
 immortalising himself that way. Just as the average 
 mortal writes his name on walls and shutters, and carves 
 it on trees ; so Governor Macquarie wrote his name on 
 towns and streets and rivers and bays. Macquarie- 
 street is one of the great streets of Hobart now ; and 
 Elizabeth-street, named after his wife, is the street I 
 lived in. Then there was Argyle-street, named after 
 his native place at home, all bearing excellent testi- 
 mony to his yearning after immortality. In 1825 
 Tasmania was made into an independent colony, and 
 it will yet be one of the brightest gems of the 
 Australasian group. 
 
 Hobart has a harbour that is only second to 
 Sydney. It is twelve miles from the entrance to the 
 town, one of the grandest harbours imaginable, with 
 deep water right up to the streets of the city. Seven 
 ironclads of our squadron lay there when I was over, 
 and they looked lost in the immensity of the habour. 
 The land is rich in minerals, almost every valuable 
 sotne of earth being present in the rocka, from gold 
 to coal, from iron to diamonds. The soil is fertile,
 
 140 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 and, as a rule, well watered. The free colonists who 
 came long ago have made much of the land, and the 
 island has now a population of about 160,000, and as 
 British a crowd as you can meet anywhere. They 
 are the centre of the universe to themselves. They 
 have their churches, their burying grounds, their 
 Parliament, and their civil servants ; and I'm proud 
 of them. They are of the same old stock as has 
 colonised the earth ; they are as narrow, conservative 
 and slow as any of us ; but they have a debt of over 
 eight millions sterling, and they make as much fuss 
 over their elections as the folks at home do ; but I 
 must tell you some more about them in my next. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 I was once staying at Las Palm as, in the Canary 
 Islands, and wanted to go over to the next island, 
 Tenneriffe. The hotel-keeper warned me solemly 
 against it, as he said they had the yellow fever over 
 there a statement which was very heartily endorsed 
 by many natives. Nevertheless I went and on 
 arriving at Santa Cruz the people there said they 
 had never had yellow fever at all ; it was at Las 
 Palmas they had it. That kind of rivalry seems to 
 exist amongst Australians as well as Spaniards, and 
 if you listen to the stories of Victorians against New 
 South Wales, or vice versa, you will realise that 
 federation is not such a simple thing as it looks. On 
 arriving in Hobart I was delighted with everything 
 I saw except the roads. It was said to be a " Cyclists' 
 Paradise." All I can say is that I'd like to see a 
 cyclists' purgatory. The man who invented that 
 phrase was a liar, and the truth was not in him. I 
 saw more cycles break down in one week in Tasmania
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 141 
 
 than I ever saw in my life before, for what with steep 
 hills and blue metal the roads are abominable. 
 
 But the climate is delightful, and the scenery 
 beats the world. I wanted to go on to Launceston, 
 distance by rail 133 miles. Nobody said a word 
 against it. One man said it was well-worth seeing, 
 but there was not as much to see as about Hobart. 
 Remembering Las Palmas we went, and behold, it 
 was true. It is a real live go-ahead town of about 
 23,000 inhabitants including the suburbs and it is 
 a revelation to visit the place. We were informed 
 that when the Melbourne boat arrived the visitors 
 just stayed one night in Launceston, then went on to 
 Hobart, as that was the picturesque part of the 
 Island. Never a hard word did I hear from the 
 north end of the island about the south end, and my 
 respect for the Tasmanians rose considerably. 
 
 I had been told that the Tasmanians were a 
 sleepy, lazy, conservative people. That's another lie. 
 Here was Launceston, founded this century, with 
 fine buildings, good roads, splendid houses, miles of 
 street?, and the electric light. They have harnessed 
 the river Esk, where it breaks through a dolomitic 
 gorge, and have made it provide the town with 
 illumination, and they are now arranging to make 
 the river run their printing presses and machinery as 
 well. Talk about being sleepy. Why I've seen 
 towns of 75,000 inhabitants in the United States 
 that were not nearly so progressive or enlightened. 
 The Tasmanians are not so feverish in their lives as 
 we are ; they have more sense, they live easily and 
 comfortably, and live long. Their exports last year 
 amounted to 1,305,160, and for a population of 
 160,000, there's nothing sleepy about that. 
 
 The disappointment about Tasmania to me was 
 its exceeding orthodoxy. When a stranger lands at 
 the railway station at Launceston, it looks as if he 
 had struck an old English town. There's the cabman 
 who fleeces you the porter who touches Ms bat, the 
 giggly girl who has come to meet her "fullah," atd
 
 142 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 the hopeless, idle, good-for-nothing, who is the pro 
 duct of city civilization everywhere. In the town 
 on a Saturday night you have the same bright shop 
 windows, the drifting crowds, the fried-6sh shop, the 
 gift-tea shop, and the draper who is making " enor- 
 mous sacrifices." The people speak as their kinsfolk 
 speak beyond the sea ; they dress as all their race 
 dresses in the little islands of the sea whence we came 
 out to found this " New Britannia in a southern sea." 
 But the busy streets were all filled with the soft elec- 
 tric light, and the people seemed to be parading in the 
 full of a bright moon. Some people say that Tasmania 
 is a good country for a man to die in, but I think it's 
 a grand country to live in. If Launceston had been 
 a mining town you could have understood its rapid 
 development, but it stands 40 miles from the sea, up 
 the great River*Tamar, where there is only a depth 
 of about ten feet at low water, and the town has been 
 made by the genius and enterprise of our own 
 colonising people. 
 
 Hobart itself, the southern capital, where Parlia- 
 ment sits, and where Government House stands, is 
 a perfect marvel of a place. They have good 
 wharves, where the biggest ships can lie, good streets, 
 fine buildings, and the electric tram. The population 
 of the town and suburbs is about 36,000, and I'll 
 back it against any town in the world for its size. 
 It is surrounded by hills, or 
 
 " Mountains, that like giants stand 
 To sentinel enchanted land." 
 
 Mount Wellington stands just behind the town, 
 forming a magnificent back ground, and the scenery 
 all round is simply delightful, while there are won- 
 derful places to visit within easy distance. It is 
 an ideal place for a holiday, and the harbour 
 assures it for ever as a place of resort for the ships 
 of the world. 
 
 They have a public library that represents the 
 somnolency of the place, for it lias no catalogue,
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 143 
 
 which makes it just a little superior to a library 
 which has an incomplete and misleading catalogue ; 
 but this Hobart library is only awaiting a live 
 librarian. The museum is a gem. It is not very 
 large, but it possesses one of the most delightful 
 rooms that I ever came across. It is the " Tas- 
 inanian Room." Here are collected all the produc- 
 tions of the Island, and nothing else. You see al- 
 most at a glance what Tasmania can produce from 
 coal to gold, from snails to sharks, from aboriginals' 
 skulls to the Tasmanian devil. If any man will walk 
 through that room with his eyes open he will see that 
 there is a mighty future before Tasmania. The 
 samples of coal alone are suggestive, but the curator, 
 to leave no doubt in any mortal mind, has cards 
 printed to tell you what is being done in the colony 
 in the way of coal-mining. Last year they mined 
 over 33,000 tons of coal. Last year the output of 
 gold was 212,329, and that of silver 175,000, 
 and of tin 145,000. Then some people have the 
 cheek to say that Tasmania is sleepy, stupid, and con- 
 servative. That room was the sight of the island, 
 because it grouped all the fact* of island history in a 
 picturesque manner, and showed the stranger what 
 the country was capable of. Geologically, Tasmania 
 is the epitome of Australia. It contains almost every 
 known rock and stratum known to geologists, and 
 its vast resources are being developed every day. 
 This room in the museum shows you all the known 
 products of the place, and the curator who, by the 
 way, came from the Sydney Museum, Mr. Morton 
 deserves the thanks of all who love Tasmania for 
 his wise and patient labour. 
 
 I would like to add that the Tasmaniaus I met 
 were nice people, kind, obliging and helpful. They 
 have a good country, they live easily, they grumble 
 a lot, and they are cursed with a Parliament, but they 
 are just as pleasant a lot as you'd want to meet any- 
 where. When we do come to federate, this little 
 Tasmania will be a power in the ranks of the federated
 
 144 Australian Gossip and Story. 
 
 colonies, for she is rich and she is wise, and she is 
 in no hurry. She has mighly lakes, hidden in the 
 heart of the great hills, that will supply her with 
 endless power ; she has fertile valleys that produce 
 the finest fruit in the world, and millions of acres of 
 uncleared land awaiting the population that has yet 
 to come. 
 
 " Complete she lies 
 
 Within the unbroken circle of the skies, 
 And round her indivisable the sea 
 Breaks on her single shore." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 In the year 1817 Lieutenant Governor Davey 
 laid the foundation stone of St. David's Church in 
 Hobart. It was a great day, for the Governor was 
 a strange man. He served out half a pint of spirits 
 to all the convicts and soldiers, and the little town 
 went fairly on the razzle-dazzle. Davey used to go 
 on the spree with the " boys,'' and some of the stories 
 told about him would almost make your hair stand on 
 end. Still the colony progressed under bis rule, and 
 it may be that neither Davey nor the devil are as 
 black as they are painted. Remembering the inci- 
 dents of that olden time I gladly accepted an invita- 
 tion to go to church at St. David's Cathedral on a 
 Sunday morning, just to see what progress had been 
 made in St. David's since Davey's day. 
 
 The cathedral is new and bright, and befitting a 
 swagger little town. The tall, fluted stone columns were 
 suggestive of ancient sacredotal edifices, and the stained 
 glass windows were as medieval and orthodox as the 
 heart of a worthipper could desire The chancel was 
 paved with black and white marble like a Masonic 
 Hall, and the brass crosses and white flowers were 
 worthy of a well dressed church parade. The large 
 male choir was dressed iu purple robes and white
 
 A Trip to Tasmania , 145 
 
 surplices, and the parson wore a white stole. When 
 we had got seated and smelled our hats the services 
 and my trouble began. There was a very young 
 man, with a very feeble monotonous voice, began to 
 chant the glorious words of the service. You couldn't 
 tell a word he said, and he had such a sanctified 
 snivel and such a holy drawl that it worried me out 
 of worship altogether. 
 
 Once upon a time I made a passage from New- 
 castle-on-Tyne to Constantinople, and the skipper 
 was an Episcopalian. I was the only passenger, and 
 on Sunday we used to have a little service down in 
 the saloon. He read the lessons, and I read a sermon 
 of F. W. Robertson's, and I enjoyed the whole thing, 
 for the words of the Church of England service are 
 very lovely, and fit the needs of poor humanity. They 
 appeal to me strongly, and if I don't go to a swell church 
 I enjoy them, but as soon a sing-song curate begins 
 to mock God with mellifluous measure, I'm done. 
 There's no sense in it, and I begin to grow irreligious. 
 I begin to look round and wonder, and think about 
 all kinds of things. When late comers arrive and put 
 down their sunshades, their hats and sticks, and 
 kneel in their pews to look through their 
 fingers, I wonder what they are thinking about and 
 what they are saying, or if they are thinking or say- 
 ing anything, and I wonder if the service does them 
 any good. Then, as we rise up and sit down, and 
 go through the show that has lost its power to charm 
 one, I begin to think about the thousands, even in 
 little Hobart, who never go to church. You hear 
 people ask, " Why the masses are not at church ? " 
 But as I sat in St. David's I found the answer. The 
 total eftect of the service on me was that 1 wished I 
 had brought my swell suit and my silk hat and my 
 gloves, so that I could have come to church and 
 looked like a toff. If that is the effect it had on me, 
 can't you understand the effect ic would have on the 
 rest of the crowd if they had come ? There was a 
 curate once said to a kid, " John, what is your
 
 146 Australian Gossip and Story, 
 
 father ? " " Please, sir," said John, " he's a 
 Christian ; but he's not workin' now." That's it. 
 Those are the sort of things I think about when I go 
 to church and can't understand what is said. If they 
 say the prayers in Latin, or in a foreign tongue, I 
 can give them credit for lots of things, but when they 
 snivel them in my own tongue and I can't understand 
 them, then I get out of sorts and say things. 
 
 I once went to a little corrugated iron church in 
 the market place of Tangier, when the sounds of the 
 Arabs in the market place mixed with the words of 
 the service ; where the wailing of Arab music 
 mingled with the organ tones of the church. There 
 sat beside me the wreck of a noble Englishman a 
 Church of England clergyman who had sought the 
 shores or Northern Africa in the last stages of con- 
 sumption. As the words of the prayer-book came 
 solemnly forth from his friend in the reading desk, 
 they seemed to mean so much to him and to me, and 
 and the whole glory of the grand passages broke over 
 me. A few days later the sick one breathed his last, and 
 we carried him to the little grave-yard belonging to 
 our people, where we laid him beneath the palms, 
 amid the glowing African vegetation, and once more 
 the solemn words of the church rang out. Ah, me ! 
 the service means a lot, so long as a school-ruined, 
 college-cursed orthodox nincompoop does not murder 
 it. I think I'd be religious if I didn't go to church, 
 for I can't stand orthodoxy, because I believe that 
 
 " Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 
 
 Cut not on paper leaves, nor leaves of stone ; 
 
 Each age, each kindred adda a verse to it 
 
 Texts of despair, or hope of joy or moan : 
 
 While swings the sea, while mist the mountain shroud 
 
 While thunders surges burst on cliffs of cloud, 
 
 Still at the prophet s feet the nations sit." 
 
 I sat in Davey's great church, and listened to 
 the kids in purple frocks intone the responses. I 
 heard the good young man, with no redeeming vices, 
 sanctifying his vowels in a perfect manner, that had
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 147 
 
 neither sense nor soul in it, and my mind went back 
 to Davey and his convict gang, to the little town of 
 80 years ago, and my soul was filled with awe. When 
 the choir arose I expected to hear the clink of the 
 felon's chains, and when the parson crossed the chan- 
 cel I wondered if he were a free man or a lag ; then I 
 looked at the congregation, and the mists faded away. 
 We were all free here, free frouo, the felon's chains, 
 but bound by the stupid old customs of dead and 
 gone ages and times. Ob, the cant and humbug and 
 stupid hypocricy of the age ! If I were a parson, 
 preaching the everlasting Gospel of God in a place 
 like St. David's Cathedral, with all its short, weird, 
 awful history, I'd shake the dry bones of the place, 
 or I'd go and drown myself. We have a canting, 
 swelling hide-bound gang of parsons in our churches 
 that make me tired and sick. They have beautiful 
 buildings, lovely music exquisite surroundings, and a 
 grand history, and yet they snivel and whine and are 
 impotent for good. We who love good dare not 
 speak out, lest people should think that we are infidels 
 and against God, so we sit silent, and watch the 
 church go to the devil, and then we have the infernal 
 impertinence to wonder " why the masses are not at 
 church ! " " Them asses " have sense. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 You remember that story about the bullock 
 puncher on the Bourke-road 1 A Salvation Army 
 woman said to him, " If you swear at those bullocks 
 you'll never get to heaven." Said he, " I know that, 
 ma'm, but if I don't swear at'em I'll never get to 
 Bourke. Well, lots of people have that idea about 
 bullocks, but it's wrong. I saw men working bullocks 
 in the bush in Tasmania, and they never swore at 
 'em, and yet the bullocks worked splendidly. It was 
 a queer place, too. We took the coach from Hobart
 
 148 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 and drove about 40 miles, through the lovliest scenery 
 on earth, down the valley of the Hu'on, where the 
 apples come from. It's a perfect paradise of a place, 
 where great hills, fern clad gullies, splendid orchards, 
 and a lovely river. We drove through little towns 
 and over bridges, up hills and down hills, till we came 
 to Geevestown. All the books say : This township 
 owes its name and origin to Mr. William. Geeves, a 
 native of Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, who, with his 
 three sons, started in January, 1850, to carve a home 
 out of the primeval forest, and six months later had 
 established a little colony of 37 souls." 
 
 That sentence is copied into all the books, and 
 the inventor of it must feel proud. I think it was 
 the phrase, " primeval forest," that made it popular. 
 But the "township" amused me, because it's so 
 little, so scattered, and so savagely teetotal. There 
 are about 500 inhabitants in the place and not a 
 public-house or an hotel Nobody is very rich and 
 nobody is very poor. The men with wives and 
 families work for 20s. a week, and a lot of them drop 
 their H's. It's horribly English only for the lack of 
 beer. Oeeve's sawmill is the great place of the 
 " township," and the men work there for about 4s. Gd. 
 a day, and are content. But somehow that kind of 
 thing doesn't appeal to me, except in the way of 
 being glad that there is such a grand " Hinterland " 
 for raising sturdy, patient workers for the more 
 fevered life of the cities. I don't think I admire 
 patient, contented people, because there's seems so 
 much to do in the world ; and I prefer unsatisfied 
 people, ambitious people, restless people, but not dis- 
 satisfied people. I'm wrong, of course, but that's 
 why I could never write an orthodox guide-book. 
 
 We got accommodation at " Hillcrest," a fine 
 boarding-house, kept by one of the Geeve's, and it 
 was pleasant to stand on the balcony of the house 
 and look around at the village, with the sawmill in 
 the centre, and the hills rising on every side about 
 the gurgling, bubbling little Kermandie River.
 
 A Trip to Tasmania. 149 
 
 It was named after Captain Huon Kermandec, a 
 French explorer, but has gotten altered a bit to suit 
 our Saxon tongue. On all sides rose the gentle hills, 
 and beyond them lay the rugged peaks of the Hartz 
 Mountains. The vegetation seemed much the same 
 as our own, dark and sad, except where the fire-king 
 had kissed the bush and made it blush a startling 
 red. The gaunt, white dead gum trees stood out in 
 bold relief, where the axe of the settler had ringed the 
 giant? for destruction. It was a lovely, peaceful place. 
 
 We went off one morning with a lunch and a 
 billy to ride on the tramway to where the loggers 
 were at work, and that was a trip worth going to 
 Tasmania for. The tramway was a wooden line of 
 rails laid for over four miles through the bush to 
 where the great forest of trees raised their crowns 
 skyward, and there was not an iron nail in all the 
 length. It cost over 200 a mile to build, and these 
 contented teetotallers were the engineers and the 
 navvies. It was a wonderful line, truly, and I never 
 saw such a thick scrub in my life. My idea of scrub 
 was that of thickly-growing small trees and dense 
 undergrowth, that cattle could tear through when 
 they got frightened and bolted, but this was so thick 
 that a pig couldn't get through, nor a rabbit, hardly 
 a snake. And the trees ! They were the mightiest 
 trees I ever saw in Australia, standing two and three 
 hundred feet in height blue gum, swamp gum, 
 white gum, stringy bark, peppermint and sassafras. 
 
 We rode on trollies about two feet high, with 
 low, broad, iron wheels, drawn by three horses. It 
 was a long ride, but it was grand and awe-inspiring. 
 When we stopped at last, beside a stationary engine, 
 we were in the " forest primeval " indeed, and no 
 human heart could 
 
 " Resist the sacred influences 
 Which from the stilly twilight of the place, 
 And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven 
 Mingled their glossy boughs and from the sound 
 Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 
 All their green tops. "
 
 150 Australian Gossip and 
 
 Beside the tram line there stood an engine and 
 boiler. On a great drum was a coil of wire rope, 
 500 yards long. Two patient, well conditioned 
 bullocks, Nelson and Leopard, stood near by. At the 
 word of command not a swear word they backed 
 up to the end of the wire rope and drew it from the 
 drum, and hauled it away up a long alley, cut by the 
 loggers in the deep, dense scrub, among the giant 
 trees. When the bullocks had reached a fallen tree, 
 the wire rope was chained to the great log, a big 
 steel shoe was put beneath the end, the signal was 
 given, the engine began to wind up, and the log, one 
 hundred feet long, without a branch, a knot, or a 
 fault, began to walk through the solemn shades. It 
 was a wonderful business, and the way those oxen 
 seemed to understand it all, without a single swear 
 word, was a revelation. 
 
 The wives and children of the loggers had come 
 up on a picnic, and the rosy, sturdy children 
 scampered through the shaded pathways, making the 
 dark woods ring with their noisy glee. They stood 
 by us as we watched their fathers fell a tall and 
 stately gum tree, whose head seemed to reach the 
 clouds. One man cut a big gash on one side of the tree, 
 the side towards which it was to fall. Two others, 
 with a saw, cut deep into the other side, and then the 
 fathers cried, " Look out, children !" and the mighty 
 tree bowed its stately crest, and came crashing to the 
 earth with a thunderous sound that was apalling. It 
 carried great boughs, small trees and all opposition to 
 the earth with it, and lay a fit object for the gleaming 
 axes of the strong-armed woodcutters. Perhaps I am 
 romantic, or poetic, or something of that kind, for the 
 fall of a mighty tree appeals to me with keen force. 
 How long had it taken that sky-reaching king of the 
 woods to grow ? Ah, who could tell ? No man could 
 say, but here was the growth of centuries cut down in a 
 few minutes, and only a small pirt of the great trunk 
 was used for the sawmill. What waste ! But is it 
 waste ? From the dead logs of past ages spring new
 
 A Trip to Tasmania 151 
 
 trees, new flowers, new life in every form. There is 
 no death, only change, for 
 
 " Life mocks the idle hate 
 Of his arch-enemy Death yea, seats himself 
 Upon the tyrant's throne the sepulchre, 
 And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe 
 Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth 
 From thine own bosom, and shall have no end." 
 
 We shared in the destructive spirit of the hour, 
 and my chum and I each swung an axe and cut 
 down a tree young ones truly, but the growth was 
 so thick that it seemed no sin ; then we saw the logs 
 on to the trollies and start on their path towards the 
 mill, and we wondered that timber should be so 
 cheap, when the labour of getting it was so hard. 
 Then we wandered away and away down the tram- 
 line and through the sweet-smelling bush to " Hill- 
 crest," and rest and musings sweet. Then on the 
 morrow we sailed away on the steamer Huon, down 
 the broad river, past fruitful orchards, pleasant 
 dwellings, and miles and miles of wild scrub, to the 
 channel of D'Entrecasteaux. We wondered why the 
 brave Frenchmen should have explored these waters 
 and surveyed them and charted them, and then left 
 the English to seize on such a fertile place. Ah, 
 these Britishers are a wonderful grasping race. We 
 steamed 45 miles back to Hobart to where the 
 Squadron lay at anchor under the shadow of Mount 
 Wellington, and as we saw the dear old flag floating 
 at the stern of the strong warships we thought of 
 Kipling 
 
 " What is the flag of England ? Ye have but my sun to dare, 
 Ye have but my sands to travel ; go forth, for it is there."
 
 152 Australian Gossip and Story 
 
 "["he Seeret ef England's Littleness. 
 
 secret of England's greatness" is a 
 much-discussed subject. Some say it is the 
 Bible ; Kingsley said it was the east wind, 
 which killed off the weaklings; and somebody 
 else says it is the little streak of silver sea which makes 
 English insularity. Most of us believe that there is a 
 " secret " in England's greatness, but very few of us 
 ever examine the grounds of our belief. Perhaps it's 
 as well, too, because if we did a lot of our beliefs 
 would break up ; and that recalls the words of John 
 Taylor. He said, " To believe without examination 
 is no belief in reality, but merely an assent that such 
 and such things are believed by others (Mr. Proof- 
 reader, if you don't spell " believed " correctly there 
 will be a funeral in our office), and is, in fact, only 
 believing that we believe." You can sit down and 
 figure on that statement, gossips, for there's a chunk 
 of solid truth in it. We don't believe nearly as much 
 as we believe we believe. Now, I don't know the 
 " secret of England's greatness," but I have very 
 strong views in regard to the " secret " of England's 
 littleness. There's a fearful littleness about our 
 race, and I believe it arises from our love of cheap- 
 ness ! 
 
 The other day a wise and good man said, 
 "We'll get that job done as soon as we get the 
 tenders in." I said, "Tenders? tenders for a little 
 job like that ?" because it was only a matter of a few 
 shillings, at most two or three pounds. He apolo 
 gised for calling for tenders on the ground that there 
 was a committee, and everything had to be done in 
 the orthodox way. That's it ; we want everything at
 
 The Secret of England's Littleness. 153 
 
 the very cheapest rate, and we allow no man to take a 
 pride in good, honest work, if we can help it. We 
 must get all we can for a shilling, because we know 
 that other men will get all they can out of us for as 
 little as maybe, so we put a premium on shoddy and dis- 
 honesty and scampishness, and the cheap man is our 
 man. The horror of this statement lies in the fact 
 that nobody ever seems to see it. The bargain- 
 hunter is a good citizen, a good Christian, a good 
 wife, a good husband, a good parent. The moment 
 you say a " bargain-hunter " you think, naturally, of 
 a woman who frequents " sales," who stands outside 
 of a shop waiting for the doors to open, while she 
 gets a chance at the " enormous sacrifices " that are 
 being offered. The woman who does that sort of a 
 thing is a foe to civilisation. She is a friend to the 
 sweater and ally of the devil. But she only does it 
 poor soul, because her husband is also a bargain- 
 hunter, only we call him a " shrewd man of busi- 
 ness." That's all the difference. 
 
 Some shrewd business men want the country to 
 go in solidly for " protection " and to keep out the 
 cheap and nasty foreigner ; but the " shrewd 
 business man " keeps on the look out for bargains, 
 and his wife still haunts the " fairs " and the " sales " 
 and the " clearing out " shops, and the " below cost " 
 places. We can see, all of us, in our sane moments 
 and most of us are sane occasionally that cheap- 
 ness is the curse of the land, but it's the other 
 fellow's desire for a bargain that hurts, not our own. 
 Oh, no ! We're not bargain-hunters. Why are some 
 of so very sick and some so very poor ? Because we 
 can rrake bargains and the other can't ; because one 
 is strong and the other weak ; because men and 
 women are born with different temperaments. But 
 we'd all like to abolish poverty and crime and 
 misery, but we never will so long as we crave for 
 cheapness. London is the wealthiest city in the 
 world, and the poorest. There is more luxury and 
 poverty in London than in any city on earth. We, in
 
 154 Australian Gosstp and Story. 
 
 our Australian cities, are going exactly in the foot- 
 steps of the old city beyond the sea. We are 
 yearning for bargains and for cheapness, and 
 we are striving to live on the blood and sweat of 
 the class beneath us. We can't help it, of course, 
 because we were born into a rotten system, and we are 
 to-day what thousands of generations of blind fools 
 have made us. When I am taken into a " sale shop " 
 and see hundreds of stupid women buying rubbish 
 they can never use, simply because it's " cheap," it 
 makes me want to get up and curse their folly, or else 
 sit down and weep. Fools, we are all fools ! Bah ! 
 It makes me look forward and sing 
 
 Kyrie eleyson ! 
 Christie eleyson ! 
 
 when I think that an end will surely come to 
 the awful love of cheapness, to the bargain-hunting 
 curse of the earth, even if come only when 
 
 " There shall come a mightier blast 
 There shall be a darker day ; 
 And the stars from heaven down -cast, 
 Like red leaves be swept away." 
 
 Did'st ever read, Ruskin, gossips ? It seems to 
 me, though it's many years since John Ruskin and I 
 grew friends, that he objected to shams and bargains, 
 and the horrible love of cheapness that curses the 
 earth. It breeds ghastly diseases. This love of 
 bargains saps the moral fibre, and you'll see that 
 people who love bargains are afflicted with other 
 complaints. They aspire to be what they are not. They 
 will keep a lovely drawing-room for their guests, and 
 live in squalor in the kitchen. I know people who are so 
 horribly poor that they can't get a square meal for 
 themselves ; who haven't got decent clothes for daily 
 wear, yet they go into " sassiety." They go to 
 " functions " ; they walk to parties, because they're 
 too poor to hire a cab. They act the grand folks, 
 and they talk about their relations and the aristo- 
 crats they pretend to know, then they tramp home 
 to starve, to moan, and to live false, shallow miserable
 
 The^Secret of England's Lttleness. 155 
 
 lives. That, is part of the false doctrine that curses 
 the world. Thse people who want to pass f jr some- 
 bodies when they are nobodies, are ever on the look- 
 out for bargains, for something they can buy for a 
 shilling that looks as if it were worth twenty 
 shillings. They are the curse of the earth. They 
 set the craze for cheapness, and other fools imitate 
 them. Some of the male bargain-hunters send their 
 goods to England by highly-subsidised French or 
 German steamers, and leave British ships to go 
 home half empty. Some men go home as passengers 
 in the foreign steamers that will one day be preying 
 on our commerce, because they love a bargain. 
 But these are only the pustular signs of a deep 
 economic disease. There's a man I know lives in a 
 stucco villa, and has two plaster lions guarding the 
 front door. That man can't pay his tailor nor his 
 butcher, but he walks out proudly every morning 
 with his nose in the air, looking as much like a 
 "blooming toff" as he knows how. But all his 
 neighbours see through him ; they know his scheming 
 misery and his dirty pride, and they laugh in their 
 sleeves at him. Ah, gossips, we know one another, 
 don't we ? Our eyes are keen and our senses are 
 acute, and we can see the tinsel nature of what the 
 bargain hunter wants to pass off as gold. When we 
 dare to be honest, even to ourselves, when we dare to 
 seem what we really are, then will the world be 
 better. Then will life be easier to all, and then 
 will England be great indeed !
 
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