The annotated, Such is life, being certain extracts from the diary of Tom Collins (2025)

Such is Life: Being Certain Extracts From the Diary of Tom Collins i CHAPTER I. UNEMPLOYED at last! Scientifically, such a contingency can never have befallen of itself. According to one theory of the Universe, the momentum of Original Impress has been tending toward this far-off, divine event ever since a scrap of fire-mist flew from the solar centre to form our planet. Not this event alone, of course; but every occurrence, past and present, from the fall of captured Troy to the fall of a captured insect. According to another theory, I hold an independent diploma as one of the architects of our Social System, with a commission to use my own judgment, and take my own risks, like any other unit of humanity. This theory, unlike the first, entails frequent hitches and cross-purposes; and to some malign operation of these I should owe my present holiday. Orthodoxly, we are reduced to one assumption: namely, that my indomitable old Adversary has suddenly called to mind Dr. Watts's friendly hint respecting the easy enlistment of idle hands. Good. If either of the two first hypotheses be correct, my enforced furlough tacitly conveys the responsibility of extending a ray of information, however narrow and feeble, across the path of such fellow-pilgrims as have led lives more sedentary than my own--particularly as I have enough money to frank myself in a frugal way for some weeks, as well as to purchase the few requisites of authorship. If, on the other hand, my supposed safeguard of drudgery has been cut off at the meter by that amusingly short-sighted old Conspirator, it will be only fair to notify him that his age and experience, even his captivating habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me to write; and he is hereby invited to view his own feather on the fatal dart. Whilst a peculiar defect--which I scarcely like to call an oversight in mental construction--shuts me out from the flowery pathway of the romancer, a co-ordinate requital endows me, I trust, with the more sterling, if less ornamental qualities of the chronicler. This fairly equitable compensation embraces, I have been told, three distinct attributes: an intuition which reads men like sign-boards; a limpid veracity; and a memory which habitually stereotypes all impressions except those relating to personal injuries. Submitting, then, to the constitutional interdict already glanced at, and availing myself of the implied license to utilise that homely talent of which I am the bailee, I purpose taking certain entries from my diary, and amplifying these to the minutest detail of occurrence or conversation. This will afford to the observant reader a fair picture of Life, as that engaging problem has presented itself to me. Twenty-two consecutive editions of Lett's Pocket Diary, with one week in each opening, lie on the table before me; all filled up, and in a decent state of preservation. I think I shall undertake the annotation of a week's record. A man might, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt; but I shut my eyes, and take up one of the little volumes. It proves to be the edition of 1883. Again I shut my eyes while I open the book at random. It is the week beginning with Sunday, the 9th of September. SUN SEPT. 9. Thomp. Coop. 10-Mile Pines. Cleo. Duff. Selec. The fore part of the day was altogether devoid of interest or event. Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks, and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; between sky and earth, a solitary wayfarer, wisely lapt in philosophic torpor. Ten yards behind the grey saddle-horse follows a black pack-horse, lightly loaded; and three yards behind the pack-horse ambles listlessly a tall, slate-coloured kangaroo dog, furnished with the usual poison muzzle--a light wire basket, worn after the manner of a nose-bag. Mile after mile we go at a good walk, till the dark boundary of the scrub country disappears northward in the glassy haze, and in front, southward, the level black-soil plains of Riverina Proper mark a straight sky-line, broken here and there by a monumental clump or pine-ridge. And away beyond the horizon, southward still, the geodesic curve carries that monotony across the zone of salt-bush, myall, and swamp box; across the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, and on to the Victorian border--say, two hundred and fifty miles. Just about mid-day, the station track I was following intersected and joined the stock route; and against the background of a pine-ridge, a mile ahead, I saw some wool-teams. When I overtook them, they had stopped for dinner among the trees. One of the party was an intimate friend of mine, and three others were acquaintances; so, without any of the ceremony which prevails in more refined circles, I hooked Fancy's rein on a pine branch, Such is Life: Being Certain Extracts From the Diary of Tom Collins CHAPTER I. UNEMPLOYED at last! with her?" he continued, extricating himself, and kicking the beast till she staggered to her feet. "Come on agen, an' don't gimme no more o' your religiousness." He remounted, and the mare, under the strong stimulus of his spurs, cantered laboriously out into the dark. Meanwhile, Mosey had taken a hand-saw from its receptacle on his wagon, and had cut the pine spar to a length of about eighteen inches less than a panel of the fence. "Lash this 'ere saplin' hard down on the top rail," he now commanded. Price and Dixon obeyed, and Mosey laid his powerful bottlejack on the rail, filling up the space, and began to turn it with a long bolt, by way of lever. "You see, Tom," he remarked to me; "this fixter'll put the crooked maginnis on any fence from ere to 'ell. It's got to come. No matter how tight rails is shouldered, they'll spring some; an' if every post'll give on'y half a inch, why then, ten posts makes five or six inches; an' that's about all you want. Then in the mornin', you can fix the fence so's the ole-man divil his self could n't ball you out. Ah!------! That's what comes o' blowin'." For the post, being wild and free in the grain, had burst along the two mortices; one half running completely off, just above the ground. "Serve people right for puttin' in rails when wire would do," he continued, removing the screwjack. "Accidents will happen--best reg'lated famblies. 'Tain't our business, anyhow. Now, chaps, round up yer carrion, an' shove 'em in." The four wires in the lower part of the fence rung like harp strings as the cattle stepped into or over them, and in a few minutes the whole live stock of the caravan--eighty-four bullocks and seven horses--were in the selection, but too thirsty to feed. Then whilst Thompson, Mosey, Willoughby and I tailed them toward the tank, Dixon hurried on ahead with his five-gallon oil-drum, in order to replenish it before the water was disturbed; and Price, by Mosey's orders, accompanied him on the same business. We steadied the bullocks at the tank till all were satisfied, then headed them back to within fifty yards of the wagons, where we hobbled all the horses, except Bum's mare. "Steve," said I to my old schoolmate: "of course, you and I are seized of the true inwardness of duffing; but to those who live cleanly, as noblemen should, this would appear a dirty transaction." "The world's full of dirty transactions, Tom," replied the bullock driver wearily. "It's a dirty transaction to round up a man's team in a ten-mile paddock, and stick a bob a head on them, but that's a thing that I'm very familiar with; it's a dirty transaction to refuse water to perishing beasts, but I've been refused times out of number, and will be to the end of the chapter; it's a dirty transaction to persecute men for having no occupation but carting, yet that's what nine-tenths of the squatters do, and this Montgomery is one of the nine. You're a bit sarcastic. How long is it since you were one of the cheekiest grass-stealers on the track?" "Never, Steve. You've been drinking." "Anyway, you need n't be more of a hypocrite than you can help," grumbled Thompson. "If you want a problem to work out, just consider that God constructed cattle for living on grass, and the grass for them to live on, and that, last night, and to-night, and to-morrow night, and mostly every night, we've a choice between two dirty transactions--one is, to let the bullocks starve, and the other is to steal grass for them. For my own part, I'm sick and tired of studying why some people should be in a position where they have to go out of their way to do wrong, and other people are cornered to that extent that they can't live without doing wrong, and can't suicide without jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. Wonder if any allowance is made for bullock drivers?--or are they supposed to be able to make enough money to retire into some decent life before they die? Well, thank God for one good camp, at all events." "How's the water?" asked Cooper, meeting us at the fence. "Enough for to-night," replied Thompson; "but very little left for posterity." "After us, the Deluge," observed Willoughby. "I hope so," replied Cooper devoutly. "Lord knows, it's badly wanted; and I'm sure we don't grudge nobody the benefit. Turnin' out nice an' cool, ain't it? The bullocks'll be able to do their selves some sort o' justice." It was a clear but moonless night; the dark blue canopy spangled with myriad stars--grandeur, peace, and purity above; squalor, worry, and profanity below. Fit basis for many an ancient system of Theology-unscientific, if you will, but by no means contemptible. Price and Cooper, being cooks, had kindled an unobtrusive fire in a crabhole, where three billies were soon boiling. And the tea, when cool enough, needed no light to escort a due proportion of simple provender into that mysterious...