On the Wallaby

W m

ixteen shillings, and

don't really mean

cient to justify one in setting out on extensive wanderings. Things had not gone well with us in the immediate past, and we were determined to go. As the Long'un put it, 'It behoved us to shake the dust of Australia from off our feet.' And though

l life, had been jacks of all trades, from Government officials and stock-brokers, to dramatists, actors, conjurors, ventriloquists, gold miners, and station hands. Being rovers to the backbone, we were, consequently, neither the possessors of untold wealth nor were we bigoted in our ideas. There was a sage once who,

to his abode, 'believe me, to have nothing is to have everything, an

nce to grasp his meaning, but it

o going out, and our hard earned capital, even to the odd halfpenny, lay on the table winking and blinking at us, as much as to say 'Come, make

ng'un looked at me. Evidently the s

, then, that we make t

reed; let

foundation of our e

certainly the more luxurious, but the latter, to my thinking, are, to him who would see and understand, infinitely preferable. There is still another way, an intermediat

ys this appeared impossible. Then, late one sultry afternoon, news reached us of the very vessel we wanted, a foreigner, homeward bound. She

ages for that Clapham Junction of the world. Po