Selected Stories by Henry Lawson Read Free Book Online Page A

of his fellow-passengers.
    “Good day, mate!” The answer came back like an echo—it seemed to him—from the past.
    Presently, he caught sight of a few trees which had evidently been planted before the others—as an experiment, perhaps—and, somehow, one of them had grown after its own erratic native fashion—gnarled and twisted and ragged, and could not be mistaken for anything else but an Australian gum.
    “Athunderin’ old blue-gum!” ejaculated the traveller, regarding the tree with great interest.
    He screwed his neck to get a last glimpse, and then sat silently smoking and gazing straight ahead, as if the past lay before him—and it was before him.
    “Ah, well!” he said, in explanation of a long meditative silence on his part; “ah, well—them saplings—the smell of them gum leaves set me thinking.” And he thought some more.
    “Well, for my part,” said a tourist in the coach presently, in a condescending tone, “I can’t see much in Australia. The bally colonies are——”
    “Oh, that be damned!” snarled the Australian-born—they had finished the second flask of whisky. “What do you Britishers know about Australia? She’s as good as England, anyway.”
    “Well, I suppose you’ll go straight back to the States as soon as you’ve done your business in Christchurch,” said the bagman, when near their journey’s end they had become confidential.
    “Well, I dunno. I reckon I’ll just take a run over to Australia first. There’s an old mate of mine in business in Sydney, and I’d like to have a yarn with him.”

A Day on a Selection
    THE scene is a small New South Wales Western selection, the holder whereof is native-English. His wife is native-Irish. Time, Sunday, about 8 a.m. Aused-up-looking woman comes from the slab-and-bark house, turns her face towards the hillside, and shrieks:
    “T-o-o-m- may !”
    No response; and presently she draws a long breath and screams again:
    “ Tom -m-a-a-y !”
    Afaint echo comes from far up the siding where Tommy’s presence is vaguely indicated by half-a-dozen cows moving slowly—very slowly—down towards the cow-yard.
    The woman retires. Ten minutes later she comes out again and screams:
    “ Tom my!”
    “Y-e-e-a-a-s-s!” very passionately and shrilly.
    “Ain’t you goin’ to bring those cows down to-day?”
    “Y-e-e-a-a-s-s-s!—carn’t yer see I’m comin’?”
    Aboy is seen to run wildly along the siding and hurl a missile at a feeding cow; the cow runs forward a short distance through the trees, and then stops to graze again while the boy stirs up another milker.
    An hour goes by.
    The rising Australian generation is represented by a thin, lanky youth of about fifteen. He is milking. The cow-yard is next the house, and is mostly ankle-deep in slush. The boy drives a dusty, discouraged-looking cow into the bail, and pins her head there; then he gets tackle on to her right hind-leg, hauls it back, and makes it fast to the fence. There are eleven cows, but not one of them can be milked out of the bail—chiefly because their teats are sore. The selector does not know what makes the teats sore, but he has an unquestioning faith in a certain ointment, recommended to him by a man who knows less about cows thanhe does himself, which he causes to be applied at irregular intervals—leaving the mode of application to the discretion of his son. Meanwhile the teats remain sore.
    Having made the cow fast, the youngster cautiously takes hold of the least sore teat, yanks it suddenly, and dodges the cow’s hock. When he gets enough milk to dip his dirty hands in, he moistens the teats, and things go on more smoothly.
    Now and then he relieves the monotony of his occupation by squirting at the eye of a calf which is dozing in the adjacent pen. Other times, he milks into his mouth. Every time the cow kicks, a burr or a grass-seed or a bit of something else falls into the milk, and the boy drowns these things with a well-directed stream—on