Marcus Clarke

“ I, myself, tossing in agony three rooms off, have been enabled to accurately follow the breathing of that worthy man, and to trace how the grunt swells into a rumble, the rumble reaches a harsh, grating sound, which broadens into the circular saw movement, until glasses ring, roofs shake, and the terrified listener, convinced that in another instant Mountain must either suffocate or burst, hears with relief the terrific blast softened to a strangled whistle, and finally dies away into a soothing murmur, full of deceitful promises of silence. ”

“ A bank shoulders a public-house, a wooden shanty nestles under the lee of a brick and iron store. Everything is desperately new. The bricks even look but a few days baked, and the iron roof of the Grumbler's Gully Emporium and Quartzborough Magazin des Modes has not as yet lost its virgin whiteness. The red dust is everywhere flying in blinding clouds. ”

“ A word about this Grumbler's Gully Cemetery. It is close to the hospital, a fine building containing fifty beds, and supported by voluntary contributions: and the patients can see the grave of a man who died yesterday quite readily. Grumbler's Gully can see no reason why they should not see it. Sick people must die sometimes, of course. In the same spirit has the cemetery been built. It is a square patch of ground surrounded by a neat iron railing. Everything spick and span new, the railing not even rusted, to the sordid red mounds not even overgrown with grass. ”

“ The white near leader seems stained with bloody sweat, and the slices of bark that, as you approach the town, fringe the track, look as though they were lumps of red putty, drying and crumbling in the sun. ”

“ His friends say he ought to be in Melbourne, but he is afraid to give up a certainty, so he stays, editing his paper and narrowing his mind, yearning for some intellectual intercourse with his fellow-creatures. To those who have not lived in a mining township the utter dullness of Daw's life is incomprehensible. There is a complete lack of anything like cultivated mental companionship, and the three or four intellects who are above the dead level do their best to reduce their exuberant acuteness by excess of whisky-and-water. ”

“ But all the hotel-keepers of Grumbler's Gully are not as elegant as Mr. Bilbery. There is Polwheal, for example, the gigantic Cornishman, who lives in the big red building opposite the Court-house. Polwheal considers his hotel a better one than the "Golden Tribute," and swears largely when visitors of note stop at Bilberry's.
For Polwheal's hotel is of brick, and being built in the "good old times" cost something like a shilling a brick to erect, whereas Bilberry's is but a wooden structure, and not very substantial at that. ”

“ The moving religious element, however, in Grumbler's Gully is a Mr. Jack. Jack was a cabinet maker when in darkness and did not get "called" until he had been twice insolvent. He was so near fraudulency the second time that it is supposed that his imminent danger converted him. Jack is a short, squat, yellow-faced, blacktoothed, greasy-fingered fellow, with a tremendous power of adjective. When he prays he turns up his eyes until nothing but a thin rim of white is visible, over which the eyelids quiver with agonizing fervour. ”

“ Society in Grumbler's Gully is very mixed. I suppose that the rich squatters who live around about consider themselves at the top of the tree, while the resident police-magistrate, the resident barrister, the Church of England clergyman, and the Roman Catholic priest, and the managers of the banks sit on the big limbs--leaving the solicitors, rich storekeepers, and owners of claims to roost on the lower branches, and the working miners, &c, to creep into the holes in the bare ground. ”

“ To obtain a criticism or a suggestion one is compelled to drink a nobbler of brandy. The life of an up-country editor is the life of Sisyphus--the higher up the hill he rolls his stone, with more violence does it tumble back upon him. ”

“ The result is that all the rationalistic-going men in the township, and there are some half-adozen, disgusted with the hypocrisy and vulgarity of this untaught preacher, have come to consider all clergymen knaves or fools, and to despise all religion. ”

“ When he prays he is very abusive to his fellow-creatures, and seems to find intense consolation in thinking everybody around him deceitful, wicked, and hard-hearted. To hear him denounce this miserable world, you would think that, did he suddenly discover that some people were very hopeful and happy in it, he would suffer intense pain. ”

“ The Frenchman, German, and Englishman all talk confidently about "going home," and if by any chance some old man with married daughters thinks he will die in the colony, he never by chance expresses a wish to leave his bones in the horribly utilitarian cemetery at Grumbler's Gully. ”

“ Religion, or rather difference of religion, is a noted feature in Grumbler's Gully. Formerly the inhabitants might have been divided into two classes, teetotalers and whiskey-hot men. There was a club called the "Whisky Hot Club" at Polwheal's each member of which was pledged to drink ten whiskeys hot "Per noctem," the qualification for membership being three fits of "delirium tremens"--but of late these broad distinctions have been broken down, and the town now boasts five sects, each of which devoutly believes in the ultimate condemnation of the other four. ”

“ Daw is a capital amateur actor, and a smart journalist. His leaders can be good if he likes to put his heart into his work, and every now and then a quaint original sketch or pathetic story gives Grumbler's Gully a fill-up. ”