Read Online Such Is Life by Tom Collins - Free Book Online

“Give us none o’ your (adj.) Port Phillip ignorance here.”
    â€œYou can git a drink o’ good water in ole Vic., anyhow,” sneered Mosey, with the usual flowers of speech.
    â€œAn’ that’s about all you can git,” muttered Cooper, faithfully following the same ornate style of diction.
    â€œNow, Mosey,” said Willoughby, courteously but tenaciously, “will you permit me to enumerate a few gentlemen—gentlemen, remember—who have exhibited in a marked degree the qualities of the pioneer. Let us begin with those men of whom you Victorians are so justly proud—Burke and Wills. Then you have—”
    â€œHold on, hold on,” interrupted Mosey. “Don’t go no furder, for Gossake. Yer knockin’ yerself bad, an’ you don’t know it. Wills was a pore harmless weed, so he kin pass; but look ’ere—there ain’t a drover, nor yet a bullock driver, nor yet a stock-keeper, from ’ere to ’ell that couldn’t ’a’ bossed that expegition straight throughto the Gulf, an’ back agen, an’ never turned a hair—with sich a season as Burke had. Don’t sicken a man with yer Burke. He burked that expegition, right enough. ‘‘Howlt!
Dis
- MOUNT !’Grand style o’ man for sich a contract! I tell you, that (explorer)died for want of his sherry an’ biscakes. Why, the ole man, here, seen him out beyond Menindie, with his”—
    â€œPardon me, Mosey—was Mr. Price connected with the expedition?”
    â€œNo (adj.) fear!” growled Price resentfully. “Jist happened to be there with the (adj.) teams. Went up with stores, an’ come down with wool.”
    Willoughby, who probably had wept over the sufferings of Burke’s party on their way to Menindie, seemed badly nonplussed. He murmured acquiescence in Price’s authority; and Mosey continued, “Well, the ole man, here, seen him camped, with his carpet, an’ his bedsteed, an’ (sheol) knows what paravinalia; an’ a man nothin’ to do but wait on him; an’—look here!—a cubbard made to fit one o’ the camels, with compartments for his swell toggery, an’—as true as I’m a livin’ sinner!—one o’ the compartments made distinctly o’ purpose to hold his bell-topper!”
    â€œQuite so,” replied Willoughby approvingly. “We must bear in mind that Burke had a position to uphold in the party; and that, to maintain subordination, a commander must differentiate himself by”—
    â€œIt’s Gord’s truth, anyhow,” remarked Price, rousing his mind from a retrospect of its extensive past. And, no doubt, the old man was right; for a relic, answering to Mosey’s description, was sold by auction in Melbourne, with other assets of the expedition, upon Brahe’s return.
    â€œThey give him a lot o’ credit for dyin’ in the open,” continued the practical little wretch, with masterly handling of expletive—“but I want to know what else a feller like him could do, when there was no git out? An’ you’ll see in Melb’n’, there, a statue of him, made o’ cast steel, or concrete, or somethin’, standin’ as bold as brass in the middle o’ the street! My word! An’ all the thousands o’ pore beggars that’s died o’ thirst an’ hardship in the back country—all o’ them a dash sight better men nor Burke knowed how to be—where’s theyre statues? Don’t talk rubbage to me. Why, there was no end to that feller’s childishness. Before he leaves Bray at Cooper’s Creek, he drors out—what do you think?—well, he drors out a plan o’ forti—(adj.)—fications, like they got inole wore-out countries; an’ Bray had to keep his fellers workin’ an’ cursin’ at this thing till the time come for them