seas between us braid ha' roar'd
Sin' Auld Lang Syne.

"I used to feel blazing bitter against things one time but it never
hurt anybody but myself in the end. I argued and quarrelled with a girl
once--and made a problem of the thing and went away. She's married to
a brute now, and I'm what I am. I made a problem of a good home or the
world once, and went against the last man in God's world that I should
have gone against, and turned my back on his hand, and left him. His
hand was very cold the next time I took it in mine. We don't want
problems to make us more bitter against the world than we get
sometimes."

And here's a han' my trusty frien',
An' gie's a han' o' thine,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
For Auld Lang Syne.

"And that song's the answer of all problems," said Mitchell. But it was
I who lay awake and thought that night.

[Children of the Bush by Henry Lawson II]

THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAG

The Australian swag fashion is the easiest way in the world of carrying
a load. I ought to know something about carrying loads: I've carried
babies, which are the heaviest and most awkward and heartbreaking loads
in this world for a boy or man to carry, I fancy. God remember mothers
who slave about the housework (and do sometimes a man's work in addition
in the bush) with a heavy, squalling kid on one arm! I've humped logs on
the selection, "burning-off," with loads of fencing-posts and rails and
palings out of steep, rugged gullies (and was happier then, perhaps);
I've carried a shovel, crowbar, heavy "rammer," a dozen insulators on
an average (strung round my shoulders with raw flax)-to say nothing
of soldiering kit, tucker-bag, billy and climbing spurs--all day on a
telegraph line in rough country in New Zealand, and in places where a
man had to manage his load with one hand and help himself climb with
the other; and I've helped hump and drag telegraph-poles up cliffs and
sidings where the horses couldn't go. I've carried a portmanteau on the
hot dusty roads in green old jackaroo days. Ask any actor who's been
stranded and had to count railway sleepers from one town to another!
he'll tell you what sort of an awkward load a portmanteau is, especially
if there's a broken-hearted man underneath it. I've tried knapsack
fashion--one of the least healthy and most likely to give a man
sores; I've carried my belongings in a three-bushel sack slung over my
shoulder--blankets, tucker,