Henry Lawson

“ Imagine a Sydney Domain Dosser in his last stage of dosserdom—imagine him several degrees worse than he could possibly become in Sydney! This man was apparently a hopeless drunkard; long past the bloated stage. He wore an old frock-coat that was in rags round his wrists, and so smeared with grease and dirt that it hung heavy from his sharp shoulder-blades. His hat, a level-brimmed stove-pipe, rested on his ears, which supported it like brackets, the rim seemed only held together by grease and dirt, and the crown was of the same materials, with, perhaps, a thin under lining of felt. ”

“ Bob loved the old man, though Jim was the Joseph. But they both and all the rest loved Jim. The old man blundered blindly and hurriedly round to the back of the house to see to something that wanted seeing to, and the dust hid Bob and his horses in the West.
The spook sought Nelly's grave that night; for Andy Page loved Bob better than them all, and felt "terrible" dull whenever he was gone. ”

“ Glimpses through the gate, when it opens to the carriage—opens reluctantly and shuts quickly—jealously and indignantly behind it—reveal an oblong two-storied house, partly end on, very fresh and clean, painted in light colour with French grey about the windows, and splashed and sprayed with ivy.
"Chawlton" is the farm labourers' village opposite, on the frontage of the farm. Six square, two storied cottages, or rather hutches, of dirty, smoky-looking brown brick, with dirty, smoky-looking tiles, but why I don't know, for this is far from London's smoke and grit. ”

“ If you come to make a living in London it doesn't do to lean up against the Post of To-morrow. Rent days fly round and bills fly in. Your landlady, if you board and have apartments, meets you with a smile of anticipation before you know where you are, and they all think that because you came from Australia you must have plenty of money. You can't take a supply of tea, sugar and flour and pitch your camp down the creek, where there's plenty of wood and water, and take a fortnight to think over things. ”

“ You might stroll round by pleasant brooks, within sound of the river; and by some brickfields, that cannot spoil the scene, and come into the story towards the end, and little unsuspected "hamlets"—that's the word—lying in wait, half-hidden in side pockets, nooks and corners of the hedges—like shy children who want to give you a pleasant surprise—and you'll come to either Halliford, Sunbury, Upper Sunbury, or Sunbury-on-Thames. But I want to get you to Charlton, and you'll be lost in English lanes. ”

“ I'd been thinking, too, all the time I was watching the play, of life as it was, and my own dull, sordid, hopeless, monotonous life in particular. But I hadn't been thinking of hers. The truth seemed that we were getting on each other's nerves—we'd been too long together alone in the Bush; and it isn't good for a man and his wife to be too much alone. I at least had come to think that when Mary said unpleasant things she only did it to irritate me. ”

“ The road ran along by the foot of a line of low ridges, or spurs, and, as he passed the gullies or gaps, he felt a breath of hotter air, like blasts from a furnace in the suffocating atmosphere. He followed a two-railed fence for a short distance, and turned in at a white batten gate. It seemed lighter now. There was a house, or, rather, a hut suggested, with whitewashed slab walls and a bark roof. ”

“ I couldn't work on Mary's feelings now like I used to. I knew, or thought I knew, that she saw through me, and felt that she knew I knew it. Most men's wives see through their husband's sooner or later, and when a wife does, it's time for a husband to drop his nonsense, and go straight. She'll know when he's sincere and when he's not—he needn't be afraid of that.
And so, the nearer we got to Haviland, the more helpless and unprepared I felt. ”

“ Mrs. Brent hastily threw a sheet of newspaper over half a loaf of bread, a saucer of dripping, and a cup of milkless, sugarless tea on the table; but she was too late. She was making moleskin trousers for the stores at that time. Mrs. Foster was a woman of hard, practical kindness, and little or no tact, and she offended Mrs. Brent at once.
"What do you mean," she demanded, "to come here and talk to me like that? What is it to you whether I had any breakfast or not? I don't know you! It's a new thing for a strange woman to come into a woman's house and insult her. ”

“ Baby grown to fresh, pretty little English village beauty—"fresh" as a half -broken filly—"Miss Leonard." Her girl friend, adopted sister, or something, as companion.
Leonard, who has a little to do with the story, stands smoking—hand to pipe, casually—in the front back-side, or whatever it is, gateway, leading into the road. He is a stoutish man, calm, contented in the gloaming, with a calmness and content that he has made for himself, or rather has made his farm hands make for him (for he owns them body and soul) — with a smile that is watch-dog like, and not altogether bland at any time. ”

“ It scared children coming home by bush tracks from school and boys out late after lost cows; and even grown bushmen, when going along a lonely track after sunset, would hold their backs hollow and whistle a tune when they suddenly heard a thud, thud of a kangaroo leaping off through the scrub. ”

“ But I was mistaken and disappointed; he probably had less humour in him than any other man in the village.
It is cut-throat competition that does it—makes crawlers of beings who might have been men had they had the brains or courage to emigrate. These shopkeepers will do anything, short of crawling and grovelling at your feet, while they hope to gain your patronage, and while they think you're safe; but let trouble come to your home—they are at you like crows round a dying sheep in the Bush, though the bill be but a few shillings. They have no souls, and have learned no mercy. ”

“ A few factory girls and eighteen-penny to half-crown a week slaveys go along our street sometimes on a Sunday afternoon, and when they catch sight of the curtains they squeak and giggle, and say— "O—oh! Look at the penny-a-yard curtings!"
It's very interesting—shows how the minds of the middle class are poisoning those of the working people. But the worship of appearance is spreading its poison over Australian cities.
I notice that it's the fashion for the ladies down here to grab their skirts up from the front when they walk out in wet weather; in London they grab themselves behind. ”

“ As our friend, the shearer's cook at Come-by-Chance Station, used to say, "There's more money and sympathy wasted over dead an' rotten humbugs than there is common justice done to straight honest living men." It's the way of all the world, and all time. Make gods of the dead! Crucify the living.
If a man's name cannot live in the history of a nation it cannot live in a stone idol. ”

“ It is the instinct that irresistibly impels a thirsty, parched man, out on the burning sands, to pour the last drop of water down the throat of a dying mate, where none save the sun or moon or stars may see. And the sun, moon and stars do not write to the newspapers. To give a weaker "partner" the last sup of coffee, or bite of boiled beans and bacon, on the snow wastes of Alaska, when the rim of the sun only touches the rim of the south at noon. To give up the only vacant place in the boats at sea, and die that perhaps most dreaded of all deaths the deaths—by drowning in mid-ocean. ”

“ But Lizzie said she didn't understand it at all.
"His talk won't do you no harm," said little Billy with resentful pride in his friend. The tall man without the smile, who didn't talk, could speak earnestly on occasion. Maybe he had once been earnest. He could speak sincerely and sympathetically and kindly of the troubles of others—no doubt he had been sincere, sympathetic and practically kind. Such a man could talk love and seem true, even to a self-loving and vanity-blinded woman. ”

“ Just before dark a solitary swagman, or "traveller," came along—on his way from a shearing shed to the coach-road, he said and seeing and hearing how things stood, he volunteered to look after Billy first part of the night, as he'd only made a short stage, and rest over next day, if they liked, with an eye to Billy and the cooking. He said he'd had to do with such cases before, and understood. He was a likely looking chap for the job—tall, with saddish brown eyes—so they washed a tin plate, knife and fork, and pint pot for him, with an audible breath of relief. ”

“ The sickening suspicion (how long and cruelly it takes to become a settled, serviceable, useful, fruit-bearing certainty) that his wife doesn't love him any longer, the wife who never loved him at all ; that she doesn't want him, she who never did, and only married him on impulse, or for vanity, or caprice, or to be her own mistress in a home of her own, or because of rows at home, or because somebody else wanted him or her, or didn't want her, or through disappointment, chagrin, or spite. What fools men are! ”

“ I came down here to get my breath after the voyage, and have a quiet think, and talk things over with myself quietly before tackling London in earnest. The village is, as I say, a new-old-fashioned one. Along one side of the village street is a row of old elms, and behind them a row of old-fashioned cottages, and an inn called the Blue Lion, with thatch two feet thick, and a gravelled footpath. On the other side are no trees, but a row of modern shops, such as you'd see in any decent suburb in an Australian city, with a kerbed, asphalt pavement. ”

“ The British commons sat round on narrowest of stools, and by narrowest of tables, boxed in with narrowest of settees, with the window, by the fireplace, in the little, low, saw-dusted bar-room; one generally in front of the fire in a position favourable for holding forth on opportunities, or leaning against the mantel, hooked on to it with one elbow, the other arm hanging loosely, and hanging himself, rather forward seemingly—either somewhat exhausted with the last effort, or in half unconscious acknowledgment of applause or approbation, imaginary on his part or otherwise. ”

“ And that is nothing in particular now, either to her or the village. Except, perhaps, to poor old Higgins with his bend.
Lizzie was "above medium height," which is commonplace in itself; had the characterless English apple bloom, which dulls and reddens and withers and cracks, but never dies out, and the ingratiating smile, not for men, but for any woman, a rung above her in life—a little classier. ”

“ Down the hard road to the crossing at Pipeclay Creek sounded the footsteps of a man. Not the crunching steps of an English labourer, clod-hopping contentedly home; these sounded more like the footsteps of one pacing steadily to and fro, and thinking steadily and hopelessly—sorting out the past. ”

“ I've wondered how such men manage at a funeral. But sudden and deep sorrow affects such expressions painfully; more so than in ordinary or seldom smiling men. You've seen the ghastly attempt at a smile of the smileless. But the reverse well, in ordinary circumstances, liken it to a big good-natured dog, sitting smiling his twelve-inch smile, and his master putting on a severe or mocking expression and persisting in catching his eye.
Mr. Leonard said, " Well, Billy!—as the sayin' is." ”

“ And Lizzie was less sentimental than the average village girl of her class, to begin with. You've seen the girl who would sit bolt upright, hands down, while the tears of chagrin or disappointment start from eyes set in a face of stone? They are as hopeless as the dark-skinned "white" men, whose faces go grey in anger.
Lizzie kept company with a young man in Shepperton, who was "on the line, on a trine" (as Barry Pain puts it) or—"on the railway," as we'd say, and there was some talk. 'Twas said also that Lizzie's mother helped her. But Lizzie didn't mind "talk." ”

“ Foster understood him as he stood helplessly and purposelessly before her.
"She's much better, Tom," she said. "She's had a good sleep, and she'll be alright by to-morrow."
"Thank you, Mrs. Foster," said Tom, and retreated in confusion to his hut, where he let the chops burn, and started to put on his little boy's trousers back to front.
"Father," said Harry suddenly, "are you in love?"
"Wha'—what?" gasped Tom.
"Because," said Harry, "Lily Brent says that when people are in love they forget and do things wrong." ”

“ Different billets make men look at things in different ways.
English home people are remarkable for their invulnerable common sense, but they allow the appearance of an awful lot of senseless idolatry in London. And worse!—there is in London a fashionable dog graveyard—headstones and all complete—and on one of those headstones the fashionable bereaved one expresses a hope that she'll meet her darling in heaven. ”

“ Tents about, seeming only not to blaze off like so much paper, and bough cook's-shed at the junction of two lanes of piled cut scrub. A sky darkened and dusky and lowering with drought haze and a boiled sun steaming in the centre of it. A heat that blinds to darkness with perspiration and chills momentarily and frightens men.
"God Forgive Billy" was in a bad way. He had a touch of the "dry 'orrers," as One-Eyed-Bogan said, who had had great experience with the "Horrors," both with his own and his mates', and dry and otherwise. ”

“ Well, one quiet Sunday morning he started down the creek, riding his own horse and leading the filly. He had a little black bundle, like a coat, strapped to the pommel of his saddle, and Mary's quick eye spotted it at once.
"Why, what's that you've got there on your saddle, James?" she said.
"Can't you mind your own business?" snarled James in a brotherly way. "Can't yer see it's me coat? You're always asking nonsensical questions." ”