They
take no more keep than rough ones, and they're always saleable. That
red short-horn heifer belongs to the Butterfly Red Rose tribe; she was
carried thirty miles in front of a man's saddle the day she was calved.
We suckled her on an old brindle cow; she doesn't look the worse for it.
Isn't she a beauty? We ought to go in for an annual sale here. How do
you think it would pay?'

All this was pleasant enough, but it couldn't last for ever. After the
first week's rest, which was real pleasure and enjoyment, we began to
find the life too dull and dozy. We'd had quite enough of a quiet life,
and began to long for a bit of work and danger again. Chaps that have
got something on their minds can't stand idleness, it plays the bear
with them. I've always found they get thinking and thinking till they
get a low fit like, and then if there's any grog handy they try to screw
themselves up with that. It gives them a lift for a time, but afterwards
they have to pay for it over and over again. That's where the drinking
habit comes in--they can't help it--they must drink. If you'll take the
trouble to watch men (and women too) that have been 'in trouble' you'll
find that nineteen out of every twenty drink like fishes when they get
the chance. It ain't the love of the liquor, as teetotalers and those
kind of goody people always are ramming down your throat--it's the
love of nothing. But it's the fear of their own thoughts--the dreadful
misery--the anxiety about what's to come, that's always hanging like a
black cloud over their heads. That's what they can't stand; and liquor,
for a bit, mind you--say a few hours or so--takes all that kind of
feeling clean away. Of course it returns, harder than before, but that
says nothing. It CAN be driven away. All the heavy-heartedness which
a man feels, but never puts into words, flies away with the first or
second glass of grog. If a man was suffering pains of any kind, or was
being stretched on the rack (I never knew what a rack was till I'd time
for reading in gaol, except a horse-rack), or was being flogged, and
a glass of anything he could swallow would make him think he was on a
feather bed enjoying a pleasant doze, wouldn't he swig it off, do you
think? And suppose there are times when a man feels as if hell couldn't
be much worse than what he's feeling all the long day through--and I
tell you there are--I, who have often stood it hour after hour--won't he
drink then? And why shouldn't