ry hot weather, so we started after sunset, intending to travel
all night. We crossed the big billabong, and were ploughing through the
dust and sand towards West Bourke, when a buggy full of city girls and
swells passed by. They were part of a theatrical company on tour in the
Back-Blocks, and some local Johnnies. They'd been driven out to see
an artesian bore, or wool-shed, or something. The horses swerved, and
jerked a little squawk out of one of the girls. Then another said:

"Ow-w! Two old swaggies. He! he! he!"

I glanced at Mitchell to see if he was hit, and caught his head down;
but he pulled himself up and pretended to hitch his swag into an easier
position.

About a hundred yards further on he gave me a side look and said:

"Did that touch you, Harry"

"No," I said, and I laughed.

"You see," reflected Mitchell, "they're more to be pitied than blamed.
It's their ignorance. In the first place, we're not two old tramps, as
they think. We are professional shearers; and the Australian shearers
are about the most independent and intelligent class of men in the
world. We've got more genius in one of our little fingers than there is
in the whole of that wagonette-load of diddle-daddle and fiddle-faddle
and giggles. Their intellects are on a level with the rotten dramas
they travel with, and their lives about as false. They are slaves to
the public, and their home is the pub-parlour, with sickly, senseless
Johnnies to shout suppers and drink for them and lend their men money.
If one of those girls is above the average, how she must despise those
Johnnies--and the life! She must feel a greater contempt for them than
the private-barmaid does for the boozer she cleans out. He gets his
drink and some enjoyment, anyhow. And how she must loathe the life she
leads! And what's the end of it as often as not? I remember once, when
I was a boy, I was walking out with two aunts of mine--they're both
dead now. God rest their fussy, innocent old souls!--and one of 'em
said suddenly, 'Look! Quick, Jack! There's Maggie So-and-So, the great
actress.' And I looked and saw a woman training vines in a porch. It
seemed like seeing an angel to me, and I never forgot her as she was
then. The diggers used to go miles out of town to meet the coach that
brought her, and take the horses out and drag it in, and throw gold in
her lap, and worship her.

"The last time I was in Sydney I saw her sitting in the back parlour
of a third-rate pu