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

to clear. An’ mind you, this was among the tamest blackfellers in the world. Why, Burke was dotin’. Wants a youngfeller, with some life in him, for to boss a expegition; an’ on top o’ Burke’s swellishness an’ uselessness, dash me if he wasn’t forty!”
    â€œWell, no; he warn’t too old, Mosey,” interposed Price deprecatingly. “Wants a experienced man fer sich work. Same time, you couldn’t best Burke fer a counterfit.”
    â€œSing’lar thing, you’ll never hear one good word o’ that man,” observed Cooper. “Different from all the other explorers. Can’t account for it, no road.”
    â€œAnother singular thing is that you’ll never read a word against him,” added Thompson. “In conversation, you’ll always learn that Burke never did a thing worth doing or said a thing worth saying; and that his management of that expedition would have disgraced a new-chum schoolboy; and old Victorian policemen will tell you that he left the force with the name of a bully and a snob, and a man of the smallest brains. Wonder why these things never get into print.”
    â€œ
De mortuis nil nisi bonum
is an excellent maxim, Thompson,” remarked Willoughby.
    â€œIt is that,” retorted Mosey. “Divil a fear but they’ll nicely bone anythin’ in the shape o’ credit. Toffs is no slouches at barrickin’ for theyre own push. An’ I’ll tell you another dash good maximum,—it’s to keep off of weltin’ a dyin’ man.”
    â€œDid you ever read Burke’s Diary, Willoughby?” asked Thompson. “It’s just two or three pages of the foolishest trash that any man ever lost time in writing; and I’m afraid it’s about a fair sample of Burke. I wish you could talk to some fellows that I know—Barefooted Bob, for instance. Now, there’s a man that was never known to say a thing that he wasn’t sure of; and he’s been all over the country that Burke was over, and heard all that is to be known of the expedition. And Bob’s a man that goes with his eyes open. I wish you could talk to him. Lots of information in the back country that never gets down here into civilisation.”
    â€œThere is a certain justice in Mosey’s contention,” I remarked, addressing Willoughby. “He argues that, as Burke, by dying of hardship, earned himself a statue, so Brown, Jones, and Robinson—whose souls, we trust, are in a less torrid climate than their unburied bones—should, in bare justice, have similar post-obituary recognition. For Burke’s sake, of course, the comparison in valueof service had better not be entered on. Mosey would have our cities resemble ancient Athens in respect of having more public statues than living citizens.”
    â€œYour allusion to Athens is singularly happy,” replied the whaler; “but you will remember that the Athenians were, in many respects, as exclusive as ourselves. The impassable chasm which separates your illustrious explorer from Brown, Jones, and Robinson, existed also in Athens, though, perhaps, not so jealously guarded. But let us change the subject.”
    â€œYes; do,” said Cooper cordially. “I hate argyin’. Fust go off, it’s all friendly;—‘Yes, my good man.’—‘No, my dear feller.’—‘Don’t run away with that idear.’—‘You’re puttin’ the boot on the wrong foot’—‘You got the wrong pig by the tail.’—an’ so on, as sweet as sugar. But by-’n’-by it ’s, ‘To (shoel) with you for a (adj.) fool!’—‘You’re a (adj.) liar!’—‘Who the (adj. sheol) do you think you’re talking to?’—an’ one word fetchin’ on another till it grows into a sort o’ unpleasantness.”
    â€œHear anything of Bob and Bat