ome of the outback towns
of the great pastoral wastes of Australia. There's the thoughtless,
careless generosity of the bushman, whose pockets don't go far
enough down his trousers (that's what's the matter with him), and who
contributes to anything that comes along, without troubling to ask
questions, like long Bob Brothers of Bourke, who, chancing to be "a
Protestant by rights," unwittingly subscribed towards the erection of a
new Catholic church, and, being chaffed for his mistake, said:

"Ah, well, I don't suppose it'll matter a hang in the end, anyway it
goes. I ain't got nothink agenst the Roming Carflicks."

There's the shearer, fresh with his cheque from a cut-out shed,
gloriously drunk and happy, in love with all the world, and ready to
subscribe towards any creed and shout for all hands--including Old
Nick if he happened to come along. There's the shearer, half-drunk and
inclined to be nasty, who has got the wrong end of all things with
a tight grip, and who flings a shilling in the face of out-back
conventionality (as he thinks) by chucking a bob into the Salvation Army
ring. Then he glares round to see if he can catch anybody winking behind
his back. There's the cynical joker, a queer mixture, who contributes
generously and tempts the reformed boozer afterwards. There's the
severe-faced old station-hand--in clean shirt and neckerchief and white
moleskins--in for his annual or semi-annual spree, who contributes on
principle, and then drinks religiously until his cheque is gone and the
horrors are come. There's the shearer, feeling mighty bad after a spree,
and in danger of seeing things when he tries to go to sleep. He has
dropped ten or twenty pounds over bar counters and at cards, and he now
"chucks" a repentant shilling into the ring, with a very private and
rather vague sort of feeling that something might come of it. There's
the stout, contented, good-natured publican, who tips the Army as if it
were a barrel-organ. And there are others and other reasons--black sheep
and ne'er-do-wells--and faint echoes of other times in Salvation Army
tunes.

Bourke, the metropolis of the Great Scrubs, on the banks of the Darling
River, about five hundred miles from Sydney, was suffering from a long
drought when I was there in ninety-two; and the heat may or may not have
been another cause contributing to the success, from a business point of
view, of the Bourke garrison. There was much beer boozing--and, besides,
it