be—and the tea and coffee, and the various kinds of puddings—we handed them over each other, and dodged the drops as well as we could. The very hot and very greasy little kitchen was adjacent, and it contained the bathroom and other conveniences, behind screens of whitewashed boards.
I resided upstairs in a room where there were five beds and one wash-stand; one candle-stick, with a very short bit of soft yellow candle in it; the back of a hairbrush, with about a dozen bristles in it; and half a comb—the big-tooth end—with nine and a half teeth at irregular distances apart.
He was a typical bushman, not one of those tall, straight, wiry, brown men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats, Crimean shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots—“larstins”, they called them. They could dance well; sing indifferently, and mostly through their noses,the old bush songs; play the concertina horribly; and ride like—like—well, they could ride.
He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old colonial school to which he belonged. They had careless and forgetful ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and he’d come to Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had a portmanteau, a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a tin box. I sat beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance, and he told me all about it. First he asked me would I mind shifting round to the other side, as he was rather deaf in that ear. He’d been kicked on the side of the head by a horse, he said, and had been a little dull o’ hearing on that side ever since.
He was as good as blind. “I can see the people near me,” he said, “but I can’t make out their faces. I can just make out the pavement and the houses close at hand, and all the rest is a sort of white blur.” He looked up: “That ceiling is a kind of white, ain’t it? And this,” tapping the wall and putting his nose close to it, “is a sort of green, ain’t it?” The ceiling might have been whiter. The prevalent tints of the wall-paper had originally been blue and red, but it was mostly green enough now—a damp, rotten green; but I was ready to swear that the ceiling was snow and that the walls were as green as grass if it would have made him feel more comfortable. His sight began to get bad about six years before, he said; he didn’t take much notice of it at first, and then he saw a quack, who made his eyes worse. He had already the manner of the blind—the touch in every finger, and even the gentleness in his speech. He had a boy down with him—a “sorter cousin of his”—and the boy saw him round. “I’ll have to be sending that youngster back,” he said. “I think I’ll send him home next week. He’ll be picking up and learning too much down here.”
I happened to know the district he came from, and we would sit by the hour and talk about the country, and chaps by the name of this and chaps by the name of that—drovers, mostly, whom we had met or had heard of. He asked me if I’d ever heard of a chap by the name of Joe Scott—a big sandy-complexioned chap,who might be droving; he was his brother, or, at least, his halfbrother, but he hadn’t heard of him for years; he’d last heard of him at Blackall, in Queensland; he might have gone overland to Western Australia with Tyson’s cattle to the new country.
We talked about grubbing and fencing and digging and droving and shearing—all about the bush—and it all came back to me as we talked. “I can see it all now,” he said once, in an abstracted tone, seeming to fix his helpless eyes on the wall opposite. But he didn’t see the dirty blind wall, nor the dingy window, nor the skimpy little bed, nor the greasy wash-stand; he saw the dark blue ridges in the sunlight, the grassy
I resided upstairs in a room where there were five beds and one wash-stand; one candle-stick, with a very short bit of soft yellow candle in it; the back of a hairbrush, with about a dozen bristles in it; and half a comb—the big-tooth end—with nine and a half teeth at irregular distances apart.
He was a typical bushman, not one of those tall, straight, wiry, brown men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats, Crimean shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots—“larstins”, they called them. They could dance well; sing indifferently, and mostly through their noses,the old bush songs; play the concertina horribly; and ride like—like—well, they could ride.
He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old colonial school to which he belonged. They had careless and forgetful ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and he’d come to Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had a portmanteau, a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a tin box. I sat beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance, and he told me all about it. First he asked me would I mind shifting round to the other side, as he was rather deaf in that ear. He’d been kicked on the side of the head by a horse, he said, and had been a little dull o’ hearing on that side ever since.
He was as good as blind. “I can see the people near me,” he said, “but I can’t make out their faces. I can just make out the pavement and the houses close at hand, and all the rest is a sort of white blur.” He looked up: “That ceiling is a kind of white, ain’t it? And this,” tapping the wall and putting his nose close to it, “is a sort of green, ain’t it?” The ceiling might have been whiter. The prevalent tints of the wall-paper had originally been blue and red, but it was mostly green enough now—a damp, rotten green; but I was ready to swear that the ceiling was snow and that the walls were as green as grass if it would have made him feel more comfortable. His sight began to get bad about six years before, he said; he didn’t take much notice of it at first, and then he saw a quack, who made his eyes worse. He had already the manner of the blind—the touch in every finger, and even the gentleness in his speech. He had a boy down with him—a “sorter cousin of his”—and the boy saw him round. “I’ll have to be sending that youngster back,” he said. “I think I’ll send him home next week. He’ll be picking up and learning too much down here.”
I happened to know the district he came from, and we would sit by the hour and talk about the country, and chaps by the name of this and chaps by the name of that—drovers, mostly, whom we had met or had heard of. He asked me if I’d ever heard of a chap by the name of Joe Scott—a big sandy-complexioned chap,who might be droving; he was his brother, or, at least, his halfbrother, but he hadn’t heard of him for years; he’d last heard of him at Blackall, in Queensland; he might have gone overland to Western Australia with Tyson’s cattle to the new country.
We talked about grubbing and fencing and digging and droving and shearing—all about the bush—and it all came back to me as we talked. “I can see it all now,” he said once, in an abstracted tone, seeming to fix his helpless eyes on the wall opposite. But he didn’t see the dirty blind wall, nor the dingy window, nor the skimpy little bed, nor the greasy wash-stand; he saw the dark blue ridges in the sunlight, the grassy
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