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fabricated. Old potato-sacks, flour-bags, and the like have been utilized. The stuffing is of fern, feathers, mounga, and sundry other matters. Each of us has two or more blankets, which, I regret to say, are a trifle frowsy as a rule. O'Gaygun's call for special remark. This descendant of Hibernian kings is content to undergo even greater inconveniences than he necessarily need do, since he has determined to make his fortune in the shortest possible space of time. Moreover, he professes the profoundest contempt for luxury and even comfort. He holds that almost anything civilized is an effeminacy, and out of place in the bush, where he considers that life ought to be lived in a stern and "natchral" way. He is intensely conservative in the primitive usages and habits of the roughest pioneering times, and emphatically condemns any innovations thereupon. He works with furious zeal and unflagging energy, and saves all the money he earns, generally investing it in gold-mine scrip, or something that rarely turns out well. In the matter of blankets and bedding, the spirit of O'Gaygun's economy and self-sacrifice is apparent. His bedding is like that of all of us, except that it is less bulky--O'Gaygun asserting that a soft bed is a sin. His blankets have long been worn out; in fact, they are the mere shreds and tatters of what once were blankets. Bunk he has none. It would go against his principles to get one. If any of us is absent, O'Gaygun borrows his bunk for the time. When all are present he contents himself with the inverted table, his especial four-poster. To see this eccentric Milesian settling himself for the night is invariably a mirthful spectacle, and, it may be added, that, no one of us is more volubly humorous and laughter-loving than O'Gaygun himself. Reclining on the sacks which he has spread out upon the table, he proceeds to draw his tattered blankets carefully over his lengthy limbs. Piece by piece he spreads the coverings. First one foot and then another, then the waist, and so on, until at last he is entirely covered. The process is troublesome, perhaps; but when it is finished O'Gaygun lies as warm and comfortable as need be. Why should he go to the expense of new blankets? Of course there is in the shanty a litter of cans, kegs, old packing-cases, and the like, which come into use in various ways. Among them are the remains of former state, in the shape of certain trunks, portmanteaus, and boxes.
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