The first step in amateur gardening is to sit down and consider what good
you are going to get by it. If you are only a tenant by the month,
as most people are, it is obviously not of much use for you to plant
a fruit orchard or an avenue of oak trees. What you want is something
that will grow quickly, and will stand transplanting, for when you move
it would be a sin to leave behind you the plants on which you have spent
so much labour and so much patent manure.

We knew a man once who was a bookmaker by trade –
and a Leger bookmaker at that — but had a passion for horses and flowers.
When he “had a big win”, as he occasionally did, it was his custom
to have movable wooden stables, built on skids, put up in the yard,
and to have tons of the best soil that money could buy
carted into the garden of the premises which he was occupying.

Then he would keep splendid horses, and grow rare roses
and show-bench chrysanthemums. His landlord passing by
would see the garden in a blaze of colour, and promise himself
to raise the bookmaker’s rent next quarter day.

However, when the bookmaker “took the knock”, as he invariably did at least
twice a year, it was his pleasing custom to move without giving notice.
He would hitch two cart-horses to the stables, and haul them right away
at night. He would not only dig up the roses, trees, and chrysanthemums
he had planted, but would also cart away the soil he had brought in;
in fact, he used to shift the garden bodily. He had one garden
that he shifted to nearly every suburb in Sydney; and he always argued
that the change of air was invaluable for chrysanthemums.

Being determined, then, to go in for gardening on common-sense principles,
and having decided on the shrubs you mean to grow, the next consideration
is your chance of growing them.

If your neighbour keeps game fowls, it may be taken for granted
that before long they will pay you a visit, and you will see the rooster
scratching your pot plants out by the roots as if they were so much straw,
just to make a nice place to lie down and fluff the dust over himself.
Goats will also stray in from the street, and bite the young shoots off,
selecting the most valuable plants with a discrimination
that would do credit to a professional gardener.

It is therefore useless to think of growing delicate or squeamish plants.
Most amateur gardeners maintain a lifelong struggle against
the devices of Nature; but when the forces of man and the forces of Nature
come into conflict Nature wins every time. Nature has decreed
that certain plants shall be hardy, and therefore suitable to suburban
amateur gardeners; the suburban amateur gardener persists in trying to grow
quite other plants, and in despising those marked out by Nature
for his use. It is to correct this tendency that this article is written.

The greatest standby to the amateur gardener should undoubtedly be
the blue-flowered shrub known as “plumbago”. This homely but hardy plant
will grow anywhere. It naturally prefers a good soil,
and a sufficient rainfall, but if need be it will worry along
without either. Fowls cannot scratch it up, and even the goat
turns away dismayed from its hard-featured branches.
The flower is not strikingly beautiful nor ravishingly scented,
but it flowers nine months out of the year; smothered with street dust
and scorched by the summer sun, you will find that faithful old plumbago
plugging along undismayed. A plant like this should be encouraged –
but the misguided amateur gardener as a rule despises it.

The plant known as the churchyard geranium is also one marked out
by Providence for the amateur; so is Cosmea, which comes up year after year
where once planted. In creepers, bignonia and lantana will hold their own
under difficulties perhaps as well as any that can be found.
In trees the Port Jackson fig is a patriotic one to grow.
It is a fine plant to provide exercise, as it sheds its leaves unsparingly,
and requires the whole garden to be swept up every day.

Your aim as a student of Nature should be to encourage
the survival of the fittest. There is a grass called nut grass,
and another called Parramatta grass, either of which holds its own
against anything living or dead. The average gardening manual
gives you recipes for destroying these. Why should you destroy them
in favour of a sickly plant that needs constant attention? No.
The Parramatta grass is the selected of Nature, and who are you
to interfere with Nature?

Having decided to go in for strong, simple plants that will hold their own,
and a bit over, you must get your implements of husbandry.

The spade is the first thing, but the average ironmonger will show you
an unwieldy weapon only meant to be used by navvies. Don’t buy it.
Get a small spade, about half-size — it is nice and light and doesn’t
tire the wrist, and with it you can make a good display of enthusiasm,
and earn the hypocritical admiration of your wife. After digging
for half-an-hour or so, get her to rub your back with any
of the backache cures. From that moment you will have no further need
for the spade.

A barrow is about the only other thing needed; anyhow,
it is almost a necessity for wheeling cases of whisky up to the house.
A rake is useful when your terrier dog has bailed up a cat,
and will not attack it until the cat is made to run.

Talking of terrier dogs, an acquaintance of ours has a dog that does all
his gardening. The dog is a small elderly terrier with a failing memory.
As soon as the terrier has planted a bone in the garden
the owner slips over, digs it up and takes it away. When that terrier
goes back and finds the bone gone, he distrusts his memory,
and begins to think that perhaps he has made a mistake,
and has dug in the wrong place; so he sets to work, and digs patiently
all over the garden, turning over acres of soil in the course of
his search. This saves his master a lot of backache.

The sensible amateur gardener, then, will not attempt to fight with Nature
but will fall in with her views. What more pleasant than to get out of bed
at 11.30 on a Sunday morning; to look out of your window at a lawn
waving with the feathery plumes of Parramatta grass, and to see beyond it
the churchyard geranium flourishing side by side with the plumbago
and the Port Jackson fig?

The garden gate blows open, and the local commando of goats,
headed by an aged and fragrant patriarch, locally known as De Wet,
rushes in; but their teeth will barely bite through the wiry stalks
of the Parramatta grass, and the plumbago and the figtree fail
to attract them, and before long they stand on one another’s shoulders,
scale the fence, and disappear into the next-door garden,
where a fanatic is trying to grow show roses.

After the last goat has scaled your neighbour’s fence, and only De Wet
is left, your little dog discovers him. De Wet beats a hurried retreat,
apparently at full speed, with the dog exactly one foot behind him
in frantic pursuit. We say apparently at full speed, because experience
has taught that De Wet can run as fast as a greyhound when he likes;
but he never exerts himself to go faster than is necessary
to keep just in front of whatever dog is after him.

Hearing the scrimmage, your neighbour comes on to his verandah,
and sees the chase going down the street.

“Ha! that wretched old De Wet again!” he says. “Small hope your dog has
of catching him! Why don’t you get a garden gate like mine,
so that he won’t get in?”

“No; he can’t get in at your gate,” is the reply; “but I think his commando
are in your back garden now.”

Then follows a frantic rush. Your neighbour falls downstairs in his haste,
and the commando, after stopping to bite some priceless pot plants
of your neighbour’s as they come out, skips easily back over the fence
and through your gate into the street again.

If a horse gets in his hoofs make no impression on the firm turf
of the Parramatta grass, and you get quite a hearty laugh
by dropping a chair on him from the first-floor window.

The game fowls of your other neighbour come fluttering into your garden,
and scratch and chuckle and fluff themselves under your plumbago bush;
but you don’t worry. Why should you? They can’t hurt it; and, besides,
you know that the small black hen and the big yellow one,
who have disappeared from the throng, are even now laying their daily egg
for you behind the thickest bush.

Your little dog rushes frantically up and down the front bed
of your garden, barking and racing, and tearing up the ground,
because his rival little dog, who lives down the street, is going past
with his master, and each pretends that he wants to be at the other –
as they have pretended every day for the past three years. The performance
he is going through doesn’t disturb you. Why should it? By following
the directions in this article you have selected plants he cannot hurt.

After breakfasting at noon, you stroll out, and, perhaps,
smooth with your foot, or with your spade, the inequalities
made by the hens; you gather up casually the eggs they have laid;
you whistle to your little dog, and go out for a stroll with a light heart.

The typical Australian bullock — long-horned, sullen-eyed, stupid,
and vindictive — is bred away out in Queensland, on remote stations
in the Never Never land, where men live on damper and beef,
and occasionally eat a whole bottle of hot pickles at a sitting,
simply to satisfy their craving for vegetable food. Here,
under the blazing tropic sun, among flies and dust and loneliness,
they struggle with the bullock from year’s end to year’s end.
It is not to be supposed that they take up this kind of thing for fun.
The man who worked cattle for sport would wheel bricks for amusement.

At periodical intervals a boom in cattle-country arises in the cities,
and syndicates are formed to take up country and stock it.
It looks so beautifully simple — ON PAPER.

You get your country, thousands of miles of it, for next to nothing.
You buy your breeding herd for a ridiculously small sum,
on long-dated bills. Your staff consists of a manager,
who toils for a share of the profits, a couple of half-civilized
white stockmen at low wages, and a handful of blacks,
who work harder for a little opium ash than they would for much money.
Plant costs nothing, improvements nothing — no woolshed is needed,
there are no shearers to pay, and no carriage to market, for the bullock
walks himself down to his doom. Granted that prices are low,
still it is obvious that there must be huge profits in the business.
So the cattle start away out to “the country”, where they are supposed
to increase and multiply, and enrich their owners. Alas! for such hopes.
There is a curse on cattle.

No one has ever been able to explain exactly how the deficit arises.
Put the figures before the oldest and most experienced cattleman,
and he will fail to show why they don’t work out right.
And yet they never do. It is not the fault of the cattle themselves.
Sheep would rather die than live — and when one comes to think of
the life they lead, one can easily understand their preference for death;
but cattle, if given half a chance, will do their best to prolong
their existence.

If they are running on low-lying country and are driven off
when a flood comes, they will probably walk back into the flood-water
and get drowned as soon as their owner turns his back. But, as a rule,
cattle are not suicidal. They sort themselves into mobs,
they pick out the best bits of country, they find their way to the water,
they breed habitually; but it always ends in the same way.
The hand of Fate is against them.

If a drought comes, they eat off the grass near the water
and have to travel far out for a feed. Then they fall away and get weak,
and when they come down to drink they get bogged in the muddy waterholes
and die there.

Or Providence sends the pleuro, and big strong beasts slink away
by themselves, and stand under trees glaring savagely till death comes.
Or else the tick attacks them, and soon a fine, strong beast becomes
a miserable, shrunken, tottering wreck. Once cattle get really low
in condition they are done for. Sheep can be shifted when their
pasture fails, but you can’t shift cattle. They die quicker on the roads
than on the run. The only thing is to watch and pray for rain.
It always comes — after the cattle are dead.

As for describing the animals themselves, it would take volumes.
Sheep are all alike, but cattle are all different. The drovers on the road
get to know the habits and tendencies of each particular bullock –
the one-eyed bullock that pokes out to the side of the mob,
the inquisitive bullock that is always walking over towards the drover
as if he were going to speak to him, the agitator bullock who is always
trying to get up a stampede and prodding the others with his horns.

In poor Boake’s “Where the Dead Men Lie” he says:

    Only the hand of Night can free them --
     That's when the dead men fly!
    Only the frightened cattle see them --
     See the dead men go by!
    Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,
    Bidding the stockman know no leisure --
    That's when the dead men take their pleasure!
     That's when the dead men fly!

Cattle on a camp see ghosts, sure enough — else, why is it that,
when hundreds are in camp at night — some standing, some lying asleep,
all facing different ways — in an instant, at some invisible
cause of alarm, the whole mob are on their feet and all racing
IN THE SAME DIRECTION, away from some unseen terror?

It doesn’t do to sneak round cattle at night; it is better
to whistle and sing than to surprise them by a noiseless appearance.
Anyone sneaking about frightens them, and then they will charge
right over the top of somebody on the opposite side,
and away into the darkness, becoming more and more frightened as they go,
smashing against trees and stumps, breaking legs and ribs,
and playing the dickens with themselves generally. Cattle “on the road”
are unaccountable animals; one cannot say for certain what they will do.
In this respect they differ from sheep, whose movements can be predicted
with absolute certainty.

All the cussedness of the bovine race is centred in the cow. In Australia
the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other object
is “cow”. In the whole range of a bullock-driver’s vocabulary
there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as “cow”.
To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ingenuity
in making trouble.

A quiet milking-cow will “plant” her calf with such skill that ten stockmen
cannot find him in a one-mile paddock. While the search goes on
she grazes unconcernedly, as if she never had a calf in her life.
If by chance he be discovered, then one notices a curious thing.
The very youngest calf, the merest staggering-Bob two days old,
will not move till the old lady gives him orders to do so.
One may pull him about without getting a move out of him.
If sufficiently persecuted he will at last sing out for help, and then
his mother will arrive full-gallop, charge men and horses indiscriminately,
and clear out with him to the thickest timber in the most rugged part
of the creek-bed, defying man to get her to the yard.

While in his mother’s company he seconds her efforts with great judgment.
But, if he be separated from her, he will follow a horse and rider
up to the yard thinking he is following his mother, though she bellow
instructions to him from the rear. Then the guileless agriculturist,
having penned him up, sets a dog on him, and his cries soon fetch
the old cow full-run to his assistance. Once in the yard she is roped,
hauled into the bail, propped up to prevent her throwing herself down,
and milked by sheer brute-force. After a while she steadies down
and will walk into the bail, knowing her turn and behaving like
a respectable female.

Cows and calves have no idea of sound or distance. If a cow is on
the opposite side of the fence, and wishes to communicate with her calf,
she will put her head through the fence, place her mouth against his ear
as if she were going to whisper, and then utter a roar that can be heard
two miles off. It would stun a human being; but the calf thinks it over
for a moment, and then answers with a prolonged yell in the old cow’s ear.
So the dialogue goes on for hours without either party dropping dead.

There is an element of danger in dealing with cattle that makes men
smart and self-reliant and independent. Men who deal with sheep
get gloomy and morbid, and are for ever going on strike. Nobody ever heard
of a stockman’s strike. The true stockrider thinks himself just as good
a man as his boss, and inasmuch as “the boss” never makes any money,
while the stockman gets his wages, the stockman may be considered as having
the better position of the two.

Sheepmen like to think that they know all about cattle, and could work them
if they chose. A Queensland drover once took a big mob from the Gulf
right down through New South Wales, selling various lots as he went.
He had to deliver some to a small sheep-man, near Braidwood,
who was buying a few hundred cattle as a spec. By the time they arrived,
the cattle had been on the road eight months, and were quiet as milkers.
But the sheep-man and his satellites came out, riding stable-fed horses and
brandishing twenty-foot whips, all determined to sell their lives dearly.
They galloped round the astonished cattle and spurred their horses
and cracked their whips, till they roused the weary mob. Then they started
to cut out the beasts they wanted. The horses rushed and pulled,
and the whips maddened the cattle, and all was turmoil and confusion.

The Queensland drovers looked on amazed, sitting their patient
leg-weary horses they had ridden almost continuously for eight months.
At last, seeing the hash the sheep-men were making of it,
the drovers set to work, and in a little while, without a shout,
or crack of a whip, had cut out the required number.
These the head drover delivered to the buyer, simply remarking,
“Many’s the time YOU never cut-out cattle.”

As I write, there rises a vision of a cattle-camp on an open plain,
the blue sky overhead, the long grass rustling below,
the great mob of parti-coloured cattle eddying restlessly about,
thrusting at each other with their horns; and in among
the sullen half-savage animals go the light, wiry stock-riders,
horse and man working together, watchful, quick, and resolute.

A white steer is wanted that is right in the throng. Way! — make way!
and horse and rider edge into the restless sea of cattle,
the man with his eye fixed on the selected animal, the horse,
glancing eagerly about him, trying to discover which is the wanted one.
The press divides and the white steer scuttles along the edge of the mob
trying to force his way in again. Suddenly he and two or three others
are momentarily eddied out to the outskirts of the mob, and in that second
the stockman dashes his horse between them and the main body.
The lumbering beasts rush hither and thither in a vain attempt
to return to their comrades. Those not wanted are allowed to return,
but the white steer finds, to his dismay, that wherever he turns that horse
and man and dreaded whip are confronting him. He doubles and dodges
and makes feints to charge, but the horse anticipates every movement
and wheels quicker than the bullock. At last the white steer sees
the outlying mob he is required to join, and trots off to them quite happy,
while horse and rider return to cut out another.

It is a pretty exhibition of skill and intelligence, doubly pleasant
to watch because of the undoubted interest that the horses take in it.
Big, stupid creatures that they are, cursed with highly-strung nerves,
and blessed with little sense, they are pathetically anxious to do
such work as they can understand. So they go into the cutting-out camp
with a zest, and toil all day edging lumbering bullocks out of the mob,
but as soon as a bad rider gets on them and begins
to haul their mouths about, their nerves overcome them,
and they get awkward and frightened. A horse that is a crack camp-horse
in one man’s hands may be a hopeless brute in the hands of another.

The firm of Sloper and Dodge, publishers and printers,
was in great distress. These two enterprising individuals had worked up
an enormous business in time-payment books, which they sold
all over Australia by means of canvassers. They had put
all the money they had into the business; and now, just when everything
was in thorough working order, the public had revolted against them.

Their canvassers were molested by the country folk in divers
strange bush ways. One was made drunk, and then a two-horse harrow
was run over him; another was decoyed into the ranges on pretence
of being shown a gold-mine, and his guide galloped away
and left him to freeze all night in the bush. In mining localities
the inhabitants were called together by beating a camp-oven lid
with a pick, and the canvasser was given ten minutes in which
to get out of the town alive. If he disregarded the hint he would,
as likely as not, fall accidentally down a disused shaft.

The people of one district applied to their M.P. to have canvassers
brought under the “Noxious Animals Act”, and demanded that a reward
should be offered for their scalps. Reports appeared in the country press
about strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote selections
and frightened the inhabitants to death — these were Sloper and Dodge’s
sober and reliable agents, wearing neat, close-fitting suits
of tar and feathers.

In fact, it was altogether too hot for the canvassers,
and they came in from North and West and South, crippled and disheartened,
to tender their resignations. To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had
just got out a large Atlas of Australasia, and if they couldn’t sell it,
ruin stared them in the face; and how could they sell it
without canvassers?

The members of the firm sat in their private office. Sloper was a long,
sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald.
Dodge was a little, fat American, with bristly, black hair and beard,
and quick, beady eyes. He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe,
and puffing the smoke through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive
on a steep grade. Anybody walking into one of those whiffs
was liable to get paralysis.

Just as things were at their very blackest, something had turned up
that promised to relieve all their difficulties. An inventor had offered
to supply them with a patent cast-iron canvasser — a figure which
(he said) when wound up would walk, talk, collect orders,
and stand any amount of ill-usage and wear and tear. If this could
indeed be done, they were saved. They had made an appointment
with the genius; but he was half-an-hour late, and the partners
were steeped in gloom.

They had begun to despair of his appearing at all, when a cab rattled up
to the door. Sloper and Dodge rushed unanimously to the window.
A young man, very badly dressed, stepped out of the cab,
holding over his shoulder what looked like the upper half of a man’s body.
In his disengaged hand he held a pair of human legs
with boots and trousers on. Thus burdened he turned to ask his fare,
but the cabman gave a yell of terror, whipped up his horse,
and disappeared at a hand-gallop; and a woman who happened to be going by,
ran down the street, howling that Jack the Ripper had come to town.
The man bolted in at the door, and toiled up the dark stairs
tramping heavily, the legs and feet, which he dragged after him,
making an unearthly clatter. He came in and put his burden down
on the sofa.

“There you are, gents,” he said; “there’s your canvasser.”

Sloper and Dodge recoiled in horror. The upper part of the man
had a waxy face, dull, fishy eyes, and dark hair; he lounged on the sofa
like a corpse at ease, while his legs and feet stood by, leaning stiffly
against the wall. The partners gazed at him for a while in silence.

“Fix him together, for God’s sake,” said Dodge. “He looks awful.”

The Genius grinned, and fixed the legs on.

“Now he looks better,” said Dodge, poking about the figure –
“looks as much like life as most — ah, would you, you brute!”
he exclaimed, springing back in alarm, for the figure had made
a violent La Blanche swing at him.

“That’s all right,” said the Inventor. “It’s no good having his face
knocked about, you know — lot of trouble to make that face.
His head and body are full of springs, and if anybody hits him in the face,
or in the pit of the stomach — favourite places to hit canvassers,
the pit of the stomach — it sets a strong spring in motion,
and he fetches his right hand round with a swipe that’ll knock them into
the middle of next week. It’s an awful hit. Griffo couldn’t dodge it,
and Slavin couldn’t stand up against it. No fear of any man
hitting HIM twice.

“And he’s dog-proof, too. His legs are padded with tar and oakum,
and if a dog bites a bit out of him, it will take that dog weeks
to pick his teeth clean. Never bite anybody again, that dog won’t.
And he’ll talk, talk, talk, like a suffragist gone mad;
his phonograph can be charged for 100,000 words, and all you’ve got to do
is to speak into it what you want him to say, and he’ll say it.
He’ll go on saying it till he talks his man silly, or gets an order.
He has an order-form in his hand, and as soon as anyone signs it
and gives it back to him, that sets another spring in motion,
and he puts the order in his pocket, turns round, and walks away.
Grand idea, isn’t he? Lor’ bless you, I fairly love him.”

He beamed affectionately on his monster.

“What about stairs?” said Dodge.

“No stairs in the bush,” said the Inventor, blowing a speck of dust
off his apparition; “all ground-floor houses. Anyhow, if there were stairs
we could carry him up and let him fall down afterwards,
or get flung down like any other canvasser.”

“Ha! Let’s see him walk,” said Dodge.

The figure walked all right, stiff and erect.

“Now let’s hear him yabber.”

The Genius touched a spring, and instantly, in a queer, tin-whistly voice,
he began to sing, “Little Annie Rooney”.

“Good!” said Dodge; “he’ll do. We’ll give you your price.
Leave him here to-night, and come in to-morrow. We’ll send you off
to the back country with him. Ninemile would be a good place to start in.
Have a cigar?”

Mr. Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew through his nose
a cloud of nearly solid smoke, through which the Genius sidled out.
They could hear him sneezing and choking all the way down the stairs.

Ninemile is a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description.
When the mosquitoes in that town settle on anyone,
they usually go to sleep, and forget to bite him. The climate is so hot
that the very grasshoppers crawl into the hotel parlours out of the sun,
climb up the window curtains, and then go to sleep. The Riot Act
never had to be read in Ninemile. The only thing that can arouse
the inhabitants out of their lethargy is the prospect of a drink
at somebody else’s expense.

For these reasons it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canvasser
there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities
if he proved a success. They sent up the Genius, and one of their men
who knew the district well. The Genius was to manage the automaton,
and the other was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims,
and collect the money, geniuses being notoriously unreliable
and loose in their cash. They got through a good deal of whisky
on the way up, and when they arrived at Ninemile were in a cheerful mood,
and disposed to take risks.

“Who’ll we begin on?” said the Genius.

“Oh, hang it all,” said the other, “let’s make a start with Macpherson.”

Macpherson was a Land Agent, and the big bug of the place.
He was a gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks,
and freckled all over with freckles as big as half-crowns.
His eyebrows would have made decent-sized moustaches for a cavalryman,
and his moustaches looked like horns. He was a fighter from the ground up,
and had a desperate “down” on canvassers generally,
and on Sloper and Dodge’s canvassers in particular.

Sloper and Dodge had published a book called “Remarkable Colonials”,
and Macpherson had written out his own biography for it. He was
intensely proud of his pedigree and his relations, and in his narrative
made out that he was descended from the original Fhairshon
who swam round Noah’s Ark with his title-deeds in his teeth.
He showed how his people had fought under Alexander the Great and Timour,
and had come over to Scotland some centuries before William the Conqueror
landed in England. He proved that he was related in a general way
to one emperor, fifteen kings, twenty-five dukes, and earls and lords
and viscounts innumerable. And then, after all, the editor
of “Remarkable Colonials” managed to mix him up with some other fellow,
some low-bred Irish McPherson, born in Dublin of poor but honest parents.

It was a terrible outrage. Macpherson became president of
the Western District Branch of the “Remarkable Colonials” Defence League,
a fierce and homicidal association got up to resist, legally and otherwise,
paying for the book. He had further sworn by all he held sacred
that every canvasser who came to harry him in future should die,
and had put up a notice on his office-door, “Canvassers come in
at their own risk.”

He had a dog of what he called the Hold’em breed, who could tell
a canvasser by his walk, and would go for him on sight.
The reader will understand, therefore, that, when the Genius and his mate
proposed to start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract
for the Cast-iron Canvasser, and could only have been inspired by a morbid
craving for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.

The Inventor wound the figure up in the back parlour of the pub.
There were a frightful lot of screws to tighten before the thing
would work, but at last he said it was ready, and they shambled off
down the street, the figure marching stiffly between them.
It had a book tucked under its arm and an order-form in its hand.
When they arrived opposite Macpherson’s office, the Genius started
the phonograph working, pointed the figure straight at Macpherson’s door,
and set it going. Then the two conspirators waited, like Guy Fawkes
in his cellar.

The automaton marched across the road and in at the open door,
talking to itself loudly in a hoarse, unnatural voice.

Macpherson was writing at his table, and looked up.

The figure walked bang through a small collection of flower-pots,
sent a chair flying, tramped heavily in the spittoon, and then brought up
against the table with a loud crash and stood still. It was talking
all the time.

“I have here,” it said, “a most valuable work, an Atlas of Australia,
which I desire to submit to your notice. The large and increasing demand
of bush residents for time-payment works has induced the publishers
of this —-”

“My God!” said Macpherson, “it’s a canvasser. Here, Tom Sayers,
Tom Sayers!” and he whistled and called for his dog. “Now,” he said,
“will you go out of this office quietly, or will you be thrown out?
It’s for yourself to decide, but you’ve only got while a duck wags his tail
to decide in. Which’ll it be?”

“—- works of modern ages,” said the canvasser. “Every person
subscribing to this invaluable work will receive, in addition,
a flat-iron, a railway pass for a year, and a pocket-compass.
If you will please sign this order —-”

Just here Tom Sayers came tearing through the office,
and without waiting for orders hitched straight on to the canvasser’s calf.
To Macpherson’s amazement the piece came clear away, and Tom Sayers
rolled about on the floor with his mouth full of a sticky substance
which seemed to surprise him badly.

The long Scotchman paused awhile before this mystery, but at last
he fancied he had got the solution. “Got a cork leg, have you?” said he –
“Well, let’s see if your ribs are cork too,” and he struck the canvasser
an awful blow on the fifth button of the waistcoat.

Quicker than lightning came that terrific right-hand cross-counter.
Macpherson never even knew what happened to him. The canvasser’s
right hand, which had been adjusted by his inventor for a high blow,
had landed on the butt of Macpherson’s ear and dropped him like a fowl.
The gasping, terrified bull-dog fled the scene, and the canvasser
stood over his fallen foe, still intoning the virtues of his publication.
He had come there merely as a friend, he said, to give the inhabitants
of Ninemile a chance to buy a book which had recently earned the approval
of King O’Malley and His Excellency the Governor-General.

The Genius and his mate watched this extraordinary drama
through the window. The stimulant habitually consumed by the Ninemilers
had induced in them a state of superlative Dutch courage,
and they looked upon the whole affair as a wildly hilarious joke.

“By Gad! he’s done him,” said the Genius, as Macpherson went down,
“done him in one hit. If he don’t pay as a canvasser I’ll take him to town
and back him to fight Les Darcy. Look out for yourself;
don’t you handle him!” he continued as the other approached the figure.
“Leave him to me. As like as not, if you get fooling about him,
he’ll give you a clout that’ll paralyse you.”

So saying, he guided the automaton out of the office and into the street,
and walked straight into a policeman.

By a common impulse the Genius and his mate ran rapidly away
in different directions, leaving the figure alone with the officer.

He was a fully-ordained sergeant — by name Aloysius O’Grady; a squat,
rosy little Irishman. He hated violent arrests and all that sort of thing,
and had a faculty of persuading drunks and disorderlies and other
fractious persons to “go quietly along wid him,” that was little short
of marvellous. Excited revellers, who were being carried by their mates,
struggling violently, would break away to prance gaily along to the lock-up
with the sergeant. Obstinate drunks who had done nothing
but lie on the ground and kick their feet in the air,
would get up like birds, serpent-charmed, to go with him to durance vile.

As soon as he saw the canvasser, and noted his fixed, unearthly stare,
and listened to his hoarse, unnatural voice, the sergeant knew
what was the matter; it was a man in the horrors, a common enough spectacle
at Ninemile. He resolved to decoy him into the lock-up, and accosted him
in a friendly, free-and-easy way.

“Good day t’ye,” he said.

“—- most magnificent volume ever published, jewelled in fourteen holes,
working on a ruby roller, and in a glass case,” said the book-canvasser.
“The likenesses of the historical personages are so natural
that the book must not be left open on the table, or the mosquitoes
will ruin it by stinging the portraits.”

It then dawned on the sergeant that this was no mere case of the horrors –
he was dealing with a book-canvasser.

“Ah, sure,” he said, “fwhat’s the use uv tryin’ to sell books at all,
at all; folks does be peltin’ them out into the street, and the nanny-goats
lives on them these times. Oi send the childer out to pick ‘em up,
and we have ‘em at me place in barrow-loads. Come along wid me now,
and Oi’ll make you nice and comfortable for the night,”
and he laid his hand on the outstretched palm of the figure.

It was a fatal mistake. He had set in motion the machinery which operated
the figure’s left arm, and it moved that limb in towards its body,
and hugged the sergeant to its breast, with a vice-like grip.
Then it started in a faltering and uneven, but dogged, way
to walk towards the river.

“Immortial Saints!” gasped the sergeant, “he’s squazin’ the livin’ breath
out uv me. Lave go now loike a dacent sowl, lave go. And oh,
for the love uv God, don’t be shpakin’ into me ear that way;”
for the figure’s mouth was pressed tight against the sergeant’s ear,
and its awful voice went through and through the little man’s head,
as it held forth about the volume. The sergeant struggled violently,
and by so doing set some more springs in motion, and the figure’s right arm
made terrific swipes in the air. A following of boys and loafers
had collected by this time. “Blimey, how does he lash out!” was the remark
they made. But they didn’t interfere, notwithstanding the sergeant’s
frantic appeals, and things were going hard with him when his subordinate,
Constable Dooley, appeared on the scene.

Dooley, better known as The Wombat because of his sleepy disposition,
was a man of great strength. He had originally been quartered at Sydney,
and had fought many bitter battles with the notorious “pushes” of Bondi,
Surry Hills and The Rocks. After that, duty at Ninemile was child’s play,
and he never ran in fewer than two drunks at a time;
it was beneath his dignity to be seen capturing a solitary inebriate.
If they wouldn’t come any other way, he would take them by the ankles
and drag them after him. When the Wombat saw the sergeant in the grasp
of an inebriate he bore down on the fray full of fight.

“I’ll soon make him lave go, sergeant,” he said, and he caught hold
of the figure’s right arm, to put on the “police twist”. Unfortunately,
at that exact moment the sergeant touched one of the springs in
the creature’s breast. With the suddenness and severity of a horse-kick,
it lashed out with its right hand, catching the redoubtable Dooley
a thud on the jaw, and sending him to grass as if he had been shot.

For a few minutes he “lay as only dead men lie”. Then he got up
bit by bit, wandered off home to the police-barracks,
and mentioned casually to his wife that John L. Sullivan had come to town,
and had taken the sergeant away to drown him. After which,
having given orders that anybody who called was to be told
that he had gone fifteen miles out of town to serve a summons on a man
for not registering a dog, he locked himself up in a cell
for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, the Cast-iron Canvasser, still holding the sergeant
tightly clutched to its breast, was marching straight towards the river.
Something had disorganised its vocal arrangements, and it was now
positively shrieking in the sergeant’s ear, and, as it yelled,
the little man yelled still louder.

“Oi don’t want yer accursed book. Lave go uv me, Oi say!”
He beat with his fists on its face, and kicked its shins without avail.
A short, staggering rush, a wild shriek from the officer,
and they both toppled over the steep bank and went souse into the depths
of Ninemile Creek.

That was the end of the matter. The Genius and his mate
returned to town hurriedly, and lay low, expecting to be indicted
for murder. Constable Dooley drew up a report for the Chief of Police
which contained so many strange statements that the Police department
concluded the sergeant must have got drunk and drowned himself,
and that Dooley saw him do it, but was too drunk to pull him out.

Anyone unacquainted with Ninemile might expect that a report
of the occurrence would have reached the Sydney papers.
As a matter of fact the storekeeper did think of writing one,
but decided that it was too much trouble. There was some idea
of asking the Government to fish the two bodies out of the river;
but about that time an agitation was started in Ninemile
to have the Federal Capital located there, and nothing else mattered.

The Genius discovered a pub in Sydney that kept the Ninemile brand
of whisky, and drank himself to death; the Wombat became
a Sub-Inspector of Police; Sloper entered the Christian ministry;
Dodge was elected to the Federal Parliament; and a vague tradition about
“a bloke who came up here in the horrors, and drownded poor old O’Grady,”
is the only memory that remains of that wonderful creation,
the Cast-iron Canvasser.

Most people think that the cat is an unintelligent animal,
fond of ease, and caring little for anything but mice and milk.
But a cat has really more character than most human beings,
and gets a great deal more satisfaction out of life.
Of all the animal kingdom, the cat has the most many-sided character.

He — or she — is an athlete, a musician, an acrobat, a Lothario,
a grim fighter, a sport of the first water. All day long
the cat loafs about the house, takes things easy, sleeps by the fire,
and allows himself to be pestered by the attentions of our womenfolk
and annoyed by our children. To pass the time away
he sometimes watches a mouse-hole for an hour or two –
just to keep himself from dying of ennui; and people get the idea
that this sort of thing is all that life holds for the cat. But watch him
as the shades of evening fall, and you see the cat as he really is.

When the family sits down to tea, the cat usually puts in an appearance
to get his share, and purrs noisily, and rubs himself against the legs
of the family; and all the time he is thinking of a fight or a love-affair
that is coming off that evening. If there is a guest at table
the cat is particularly civil to him, because the guest is likely to have
the best of what is going. Sometimes, instead of recognizing this civility
with something to eat, the guest stoops down and strokes the cat, and says,
“Poor pussy! poor pussy!”

The cat soon tires of that; he puts up his claw and quietly but firmly
rakes the guest in the leg.

“Ow!” says the guest, “the cat stuck his claws into me!”
The delighted family remarks, “Isn’t it sweet of him?
Isn’t he intelligent? HE WANTS YOU TO GIVE HIM SOMETHING TO EAT.”

The guest dares not do what he would like to do — kick the cat
through the window — so, with tears of rage and pain in his eyes,
he affects to be very much amused, and sorts out a bit of fish
from his plate and hands it down. The cat gingerly receives it,
with a look in his eyes that says: “Another time, my friend,
you won’t be so dull of comprehension,” and purrs maliciously
as he retires to a safe distance from the guest’s boot before eating it.
A cat isn’t a fool — not by a long way.

When the family has finished tea, and gathers round the fire to enjoy
the hours of indigestion, the cat slouches casually out of the room
and disappears. Life, true life, now begins for him.

He saunters down his own backyard, springs to the top of the fence
with one easy bound, drops lightly down on the other side,
trots across the right-of-way to a vacant allotment, and skips to the roof
of an empty shed. As he goes, he throws off the effeminacy
of civilisation; his gait becomes lithe and pantherlike;
he looks quickly and keenly from side to side, and moves noiselessly,
for he has so many enemies — dogs, cabmen with whips,
and small boys with stones.

Arrived on the top of the shed, the cat arches his back, rakes his claws
once or twice through the soft bark of the old roof, wheels round
and stretches himself a few times; just to see that every muscle
is in full working order; then, dropping his head nearly to his paws,
he sends across a league of backyards his call to his kindred –
a call to love, or war, or sport.

Before long they come, gliding, graceful shadows, approaching circuitously,
and halting occasionally to reconnoitre — tortoiseshell, tabby, and black,
all domestic cats, but all transformed for the nonce
into their natural state. No longer are they the hypocritical,
meek creatures who an hour ago were cadging for fish and milk.
They are now ruffling, swaggering blades with a Gascon sense of dignity.
Their fights are grim and determined, and a cat will be clawed to ribbons
before he will yield.

Even young lady cats have this inestimable superiority over human beings,
that they can work off jealousy, hatred, and malice in a sprawling,
yelling combat on a flat roof. All cats fight, and all keep themselves
more or less in training while they are young. Your cat may be
the acknowledged lightweight champion of his district –
a Griffo of the feline ring!

Just think how much more he gets out of his life than you do out of yours
– what a hurricane of fighting and lovemaking his life is –
and blush for yourself. You have had one little love-affair,
and never had a good, all-out fight in your life!

And the sport they have, too! As they get older and retire from the ring
they go in for sport more systematically; the suburban backyards,
that are to us but dullness indescribable, are to them hunting-grounds
and trysting-places where they may have more gallant adventure
than ever had King Arthur’s knights or Robin Hood’s merry men.

Grimalkin decides to kill a canary in a neighbouring verandah.
Consider the fascination of it — the stealthy reconnaissance
from the top of the fence; the care to avoid waking the house-dog,
the noiseless approach and the hurried dash, and the fierce clawing
at the fluttering bird till its mangled body is dragged through
the bars of the cage; the exultant retreat with the spoil;
the growling over the feast that follows. Not the least entertaining part
of it is the demure satisfaction of arriving home in time for breakfast
and hearing the house-mistress say: “Tom must be sick; he seems to have
no appetite.”

It is always levelled as a reproach against cats that they are more fond
of their home than of the people in it. Naturally, the cat doesn’t like
to leave his country, the land where all his friends are,
and where he knows every landmark. Exiled in a strange land,
he would have to learn a new geography, to exploit another tribe of dogs,
to fight and make love to an entirely new nation of cats.
Life isn’t long enough for that sort of thing. So, when the family moves,
the cat, if allowed, will stay at the old house and attach himself
to the new tenants. He will give them the privilege of boarding him
while he enjoys life in his own way. He is not going to sacrifice
his whole career for the doubtful reward which fidelity to his old master
or mistress might bring.

Dog-fighting as a sport is not much in vogue now-a-days. To begin with
it is illegal. Not that THAT matters much, for Sunday drinking
is also illegal. But dog-fighting is one of the cruel sports which
the community has decided to put down with all the force of public opinion.
Nevertheless, a certain amount of it is still carried on near Sydney,
and very neatly and scientifically carried on, too — principally by
gentlemen who live out Botany way and do not care for public opinion.

The grey dawn was just breaking over Botany when we got to
the meeting-place. Away to the East the stars were paling
in the faint flush of coming dawn, and over the sandhills came
the boom of breakers. It was Sunday morning, and all the respectable,
non-dog-fighting population of that odoriferous suburb were sleeping
their heavy, Sunday-morning sleep. Some few people, however, were astir.
In the dim light hurried pedestrians plodded along the heavy road
towards the sandhills. Now and then a van, laden with ten or eleven of
“the talent”, and drawn by a horse that cost fifteen shillings at auction,
rolled softly along in the same direction. These were dog-fighters who
had got “the office”, and knew exactly where the match was to take place.

The “meet” was on a main road, about half-a-mile from town;
here some two hundred people had assembled, and hung up
their horses and vehicles to the fence without the slightest concealment.
They said the police would not interfere with them — and they did not seem
a nice crowd to interfere with.

One dog was on the ground when we arrived, having come out
in a hansom cab with his trainer. He was a white bull-terrier,
weighing about forty pounds, “trained to the hour”,
with the muscles standing out all over him. He waited in the cab,
licking his trainer’s face at intervals to reassure that individual of
his protection and support; the rest of the time he glowered out of the cab
and eyed the public scornfully. He knew as well as any human being
that there was sport afoot, and looked about eagerly and wickedly
to see what he could get his teeth into.

Soon a messenger came running up to know whether they meant
to sit in the cab till the police came; the other dog, he said,
had arrived and all was ready. The trainer and dog got out of the cab;
we followed them through a fence and over a rise — and there,
about twenty yards from the main road, was a neatly-pitched enclosure
like a prize-ring, a thirty-foot-square enclosure formed with
stakes and ropes. About a hundred people were at the ringside,
and in the far corner, in the arms of his trainer, was the other dog –
a brindle.

It was wonderful to see the two dogs when they caught sight of each other.
The white dog came up to the ring straining at his leash, nearly dragging
his trainer off his feet in his efforts to get at the enemy.
At intervals he emitted a hoarse roar of challenge and defiance.

The brindled dog never uttered a sound. He fixed his eyes on his adversary
with a look of intense hunger, of absolute yearning for combat.
He never for an instant shifted his unwinking gaze.
He seemed like an animal who saw the hopes of years about to be realised.
With painful earnestness he watched every detail of the other dog’s toilet;
and while the white dog was making fierce efforts to get at him,
he stood Napoleonic, grand in his courage, waiting for the fray.

All details were carefully attended to, and all rules strictly observed.
People may think a dog-fight is a go-as-you-please outbreak of lawlessness,
but there are rules and regulations — simple, but effective. There were
two umpires, a referee, a timekeeper, and two seconds for each dog.
The stakes were said to be ten pounds a-side. After some talk,
the dogs were carried to the centre of the ring by their seconds and put
on the ground. Like a flash of lightning they dashed at each other,
and the fight began.

Nearly everyone has seen dogs fight — “it is their nature to”,
as Dr. Watts put it. But an ordinary worry between (say) a retriever
and a collie, terminating as soon as one or other gets his ear bitten,
gives a very faint idea of a real dog-fight. But bull-terriers
are the gladiators of the canine race. Bred and trained to fight,
carefully exercised and dieted for weeks beforehand, they come to the fray
exulting in their strength and determined to win. Each is trained to fight
for certain holds, a grip of the ear or the back of the neck
being of very slight importance. The foot is a favourite hold,
the throat is, of course, fashionable — if they can get it.

The white and the brindle sparred and wrestled and gripped and threw
each other, fighting grimly, and disdaining to utter a sound.
Their seconds dodged round them unceasingly, giving them encouragement
and advice — “That’s the style, Boxer — fight for his foot” –
“Draw your foot back, old man,” and so on. Now and again one dog
got a grip of the other’s foot and chewed savagely, and the spectators
danced with excitement. The moment the dogs let each other go
they were snatched up by their seconds and carried to their corners,
and a minute’s time was allowed, in which their mouths were washed out
and a cloth rubbed over their bodies.

Then came the ceremony of “coming to scratch”. When time was called
for the second round the brindled dog was let loose in his own corner,
and was required by the rules to go across the ring of his own free will
and attack the other dog. If he failed to do this he would lose the fight.
The white dog, meanwhile, was held in his corner waiting the attack.
After the next round it was the white dog’s turn to make the attack,
and so on alternately. The animals need not fight a moment longer
than they chose, as either dog could abandon the fight by failing to attack
his enemy.

While their condition lasted they used to dash across the ring at full run;
but, after a while, when the punishment got severe and their “fitness”
began to fail, it became a very exciting question whether or not a dog
would “come to scratch”. The brindled dog’s condition was not so good
as the other’s. He used to lie on his stomach between the rounds to
rest himself, and several times it looked as if he would not cross the ring
when his turn came. But as soon as time was called he would
start to his feet and limp slowly across glaring steadily at his adversary;
then, as he got nearer, he would quicken his pace, make a savage rush,
and in a moment they would be locked in combat. So they battled on
for fifty-six minutes, till the white dog (who was apparently having
all the best of it), on being called to cross the ring,
only went half-way across and stood there for a minute growling savagely.
So he lost the fight.

No doubt it was a brutal exhibition. But it was not cruel to the animals
in the same sense that pigeon-shooting or hare-hunting is cruel.
The dogs are born fighters, anxious and eager to fight,
desiring nothing better. Whatever limited intelligence they have
is all directed to this one consuming passion. They could stop
when they liked, but anyone looking on could see that they gloried
in the combat. Fighting is like breath to them — they must have it.
Nature has implanted in all animals a fighting instinct
for the weeding out of the physically unfit, and these dogs have
an extra share of that fighting instinct.

Of course, now that militarism is going to be abolished, and the world
is going to be so good and teetotal, and only fight in debating societies,
these nasty savage animals will be out of date. We will not be allowed
to keep anything more quarrelsome than a poodle — and a man of the future,
the New Man, whose fighting instincts have not been quite bred out of him,
will, perhaps, be found at grey dawn of a Sunday morning
with a crowd of other unregenerates in some backyard
frantically cheering two of them to mortal combat.

Of all the ways in which men get a living there is none so hard
and so precarious as that of steeplechase-riding in Australia.
It is bad enough in England, where steeplechases only take place in winter,
when the ground is soft, where the horses are properly schooled
before being raced, and where most of the obstacles will yield a little
if struck and give the horse a chance to blunder over safely.

In Australia the men have to go at racing-speed, on very hard ground,
over the most rigid and uncompromising obstacles — ironbark rails
clamped into solid posts with bands of iron. No wonder they are always
coming to grief, and are always in and out of hospital
in splints and bandages. Sometimes one reads that a horse has fallen
and the rider has “escaped with a severe shaking.”

That “shaking”, gentle reader, would lay you or me up for weeks,
with a doctor to look after us and a crowd of sympathetic friends
calling to know how our poor back was. But the steeplechase-rider
has to be out and about again, “riding exercise” every morning,
and “schooling” all sorts of cantankerous brutes over the fences.
These men take their lives in their hands and look at grim death
between their horses’ ears every time they race or “school”.

The death-record among Australian cross-country jockeys and horses
is very great; it is a curious instance of how custom sanctifies all things
that such horse-and-man slaughter is accepted in such a callous way.
If any theatre gave a show at which men and horses were habitually
crippled or killed in full sight of the audience, the manager would be
put on his trial for manslaughter.

Our race-tracks use up their yearly average of horses and men
without attracting remark. One would suppose that the risk being so great
the profits were enormous; but they are not. In “the game” as played
on our racecourses there is just a bare living for a good capable horseman
while he lasts, with the certainty of an ugly smash if he keeps at it
long enough.

And they don’t need to keep at it very long. After a few good “shakings”
they begin to take a nip or two to put heart into them before they go out,
and after a while they have to increase the dose. At last they cannot
ride at all without a regular cargo of alcohol on board, and are either
“half-muzzy” or shaky according as they have taken too much or too little.

Then the game becomes suicidal; it is an axiom that as soon as a man
begins to funk he begins to fall. The reason is that a rider who has
lost his nerve is afraid of his horse making a mistake, and takes a pull,
or urges him onward, just at the crucial moment when the horse is rattling
up to his fence and judging his distance. That little, nervous pull
at his head or that little touch of the spur, takes his attention
from the fence, with the result that he makes his spring a foot too far off
or a foot too close in, and — smash!

The loafers who hang about the big fences rush up to see if the jockey
is killed or stunned; if he is, they dispose of any jewellery he may have
about him; they have been known almost to tear a finger off in their
endeavours to secure a ring. The ambulance clatters up at a canter,
the poor rider is pushed in out of sight, and the ladies in the stand
say how unlucky they are — that brute of a horse falling
after they backed him. A wolfish-eyed man in the Leger-stand shouts
to a wolfish-eyed pal, “Bill, I believe that jock was killed
when the chestnut fell,” and Bill replies, “Yes, damn him,
I had five bob on him.” And the rider, gasping like a crushed chicken,
is carried into the casualty-room and laid on a little stretcher,
while outside the window the bookmakers are roaring “Four to one bar one,”
and the racing is going on merrily as ever.

These remarks serve to introduce one of the fraternity
who may be considered as typical of all. He was a small, wiry,
hard-featured fellow, the son of a stockman on a big cattle-station,
and began life as a horse-breaker; he was naturally a horseman,
able and willing to ride anything that could carry him.
He left the station to go with cattle on the road, and having picked up
a horse that showed pace, amused himself by jumping over fences.
Then he went to Wagga, entered the horse in a steeplechase,
rode him himself, won handsomely, sold the horse at a good price
to a Sydney buyer, and went down to ride it in his Sydney races.

In Sydney he did very well; he got a name as a fearless and clever rider,
and was offered several mounts on fine animals. So he pitched his camp
in Sydney, and became a fully-enrolled member of the worst profession
in the world. I had known him in the old days on the road, and when
I met him on the course one day I enquired how he liked the new life.

“Well, it’s a livin’,” he said, “but it’s no great shakes. They don’t give
steeplechase-riders a chance in Sydney. There’s very few races,
and the big sweepstakes keep horses out of the game.”

“Do you get a fair share of the riding?” I asked.

“Oh, yes; I get as much as anybody. But there’s a lot of ‘em got a notion
I won’t take hold of a horse when I’m told (i.e., pull him
to prevent him winning). Some of these days I’ll take hold of a horse
when they don’t expect it.”

I smiled as I thought there was probably a sorry day in store
for some backer when the jockey “took hold” unexpectedly.

“Do you have to pull horses, then, to get employment?”

“Oh, well, it’s this way,” he said, rather apologetically, “if an owner
is badly treated by the handicapper, and is just giving his horse a run
to get weight off, then it’s right enough to catch hold a bit.
But when a horse is favourite and the public are backing him
it isn’t right to take hold of him then. _I_ would not do it.”
This was his whole code of morals — not to pull a favourite;
and he felt himself very superior to the scoundrel who would pull
favourites or outsiders indiscriminately.

“What do you get for riding?” I asked him.

“Well,” he said, looking about uneasily, “we’re supposed to get
a fiver for a losing mount and ten pounds if we win, but a lot
of the steeplechase-owners are what I call `battlers’ –
men who have no money and get along by owing everybody. They promise us
all sorts of money if we win, but they don’t pay if we lose.
I only got two pounds for that last steeplechase.”

“Two pounds!” I made a rapid calculation. He had ridden over
eighteen fences for two pounds — had chanced his life eighteen times
at less than half-a-crown a time.

“Good Heavens!” I said, “that’s a poor game. Wouldn’t you be better
back on the station?”

“Oh, I don’t know — sometimes we get laid a bit to nothing,
and do well out of a race. And then, you know, a steeplechase rider
is somebody — not like an ordinary fellow that is just working.”

I realised that I was an “ordinary fellow who was just working”,
and felt small accordingly.

“I’m just off to weigh now,” he said — “I’m riding Contractor,
and he’ll run well, but he always seems to fall at those logs. Still,
I ought to have luck to-day. I met a hearse as I was coming out.
I’ll get him over the fences, somehow.”

“Do you think it lucky, then, to meet a hearse?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “if you MEET it. You mustn’t overtake it –
that’s unlucky. So is a cross-eyed man unlucky. Cross-eyed men
ought to be kept off racecourses.”

He reappeared clad in his racing rig, and we set off to see
the horse saddled. We found the owner in a great state of excitement.
It seemed he had no money — absolutely none whatever — but had borrowed
enough to pay the sweepstakes, and stood to make something if the horse won
and lose nothing if he lost, as he had nothing to lose. My friend insisted
on being paid two pounds before he would mount, and the owner
nearly had a fit in his efforts to persuade him to ride on credit.
At last a backer of the horse agreed to pay 2 pounds 10s., win or lose,
and the rider was to get 25 pounds out of the prize if he won.
So up he got; and as he and the others walked the big muscular horses
round the ring, nodding gaily to friends in the crowd, I thought of
the gladiators going out to fight in the arena with the cry of
“Hail, Caesar, those about to die salute thee!”

The story of the race is soon told. My friend went to the front
at the start and led nearly all the way, and “Contractor!” was on
every one’s lips as the big horse sailed along in front of his field.
He came at the log-fence full of running, and it looked certain
that he would get over. But at the last stride he seemed to falter,
then plunged right into the fence, striking it with his chest, and,
turning right over, landed on his unfortunate rider.

A crowd clustered round and hid horse and rider from view,
and I ran down to the casualty-room to meet him when the ambulance came in.
The limp form was carefully taken out and laid on a stretcher
while a doctor examined the crushed ribs, the broken arm, and all the havoc
that the horse’s huge weight had wrought.

There was no hope from the first. My poor friend, who had so often
faced Death for two pounds, lay very still awhile. Then he began to talk,
wandering in his mind, “Where are the cattle?” — his mind evidently
going back to the old days on the road. Then, quickly, “Look out there –
give me room!” and again “Five-and-twenty pounds, Mary, and a sure thing
if he don’t fall at the logs.”

Mary was sobbing beside the bed, cursing the fence and the money
that had brought him to grief. At last, in a tone of satisfaction,
he said, quite clear and loud: “I know how it was –
THERE COULDN’T HAVE BEEN ANY DEAD MAN IN THAT HEARSE!”

And so, having solved the mystery to his own satisfaction, he drifted away
into unconsciousness — and woke somewhere on the other side
of the big fence that we can neither see through nor over,
but all have to face sooner or later.

The circus was having its afternoon siesta. Overhead the towering
canvas tent spread like a giant mushroom on a network of stalks –
slanting beams, interlaced with guys and wire ropes.

The ring looked small and lonely; its circle of empty benches seemed
to stare intently at it, as though some sort of unseen performance
were going on for the benefit of a ghostly audience. Now and again
a guy rope creaked, or a loose end of canvas flapped like faint,
unreal applause, as the silence shut down again, it did not need
much imagination to people the ring with dead and gone circus riders
performing for the benefit of shadowy spectators packed on those benches.

In the menagerie portion matters were different; here there was
a free and easy air, the animals realising that for the present
the eyes of the public were off them, and they could put in the afternoon
as they chose.

The big African apes had dropped the “business” of showing their teeth,
and pretending that they wanted to tear the spectators’ faces off.
They were carefully and painstakingly trying to fix up a kind of
rustic seat in the corner of their cage with a short piece of board,
which they placed against the wall. This fell down every time
they sat on it, and the whole adjustment had to be gone through again.

The camel had stretched himself full length on the tan, and was enjoying
a luxurious snooze, oblivious of the fact that before long he would have to
get up and assume that far-off ship-of-the-desert aspect. The remainder
of the animals were, like actors, “resting” before their “turn” came on;
even the elephant had ceased to sway about, while a small monkey,
asleep on a sloping tent pole, had an attack of nightmare
and would have fallen off his perch but for his big tail.
It was a land of the Lotus-eater

     "In which it seemed always afternoon."

These visions were dispelled by the entry of a person who said,
“D’ye want to see Dan?” and soon Dan Fitzgerald, the man who knows
all about the training of horses, came into the tent with Montgomery,
the ringmaster, and between them they proceeded to expound the methods
of training horseflesh.

“What sort of horse do we buy for circus work? Well, it depends what
we want ‘em for. There are three sorts of horses in use in a circus –
ring horses, trick horses, and school horses; but it doesn’t matter
what he is wanted for, a horse is all the better if he knows nothing.
A horse that has been pulled about and partly trained has to unlearn a lot
before he is any use to us. The less he knows, the better it is.”

“Then do you just try any sort of horse?”

“Any sort, so long as he is a good sort, but it depends on what
he is wanted for. If we want a ring horse, he has to be a quiet
sober-going animal, not too well-bred and fiery. A ring horse is one
that just goes round the ring for the bareback riders and equestriennes
to perform on. The human being is the “star”, and the horse in only
a secondary performer, a sort of understudy; yes, that’s it,
an understudy — he has to study how to keep under the man.”

“Are they hard to train?”

“Their work all depends on the men that ride them. In bareback riding
there’s a knack in jumping on the horse. If a man lands awkwardly
and jars the horse’s back, the horse will get out of step
and flinch at each jump, and he isn’t nearly so good to perform on.
A ring horse must not swerve or change his pace; if you’re up in the air,
throwing a somersault, and the horse swerves from underneath you –
where are you?”

“Some people think that horses take a lot of notice of the band –
is that so?”

“Not that I know of. If there are any horses in the show
with an ear for music, I haven’t heard of them. They take a lot of notice
of the ringmaster.”

“Does it take them long to learn this work?”

“Not long; a couple of months will teach a ring horse; of course,
some are better than others.”

“First of all we teach them to come up to you, with the whip,
like horsebreakers do. Then we run them round the ring with a lunging rein
for a long time; then, when they are steady to the ring, we let them run
with the rein loose, and the trainer can catch hold of it if they go wrong.
Then we put a roller on them — a broad surcingle that goes round
the horse’s body — and the boys jump on them and canter round,
holding on to the roller, or standing up, lying down, and doing tricks
till the horse gets used to it.”

“Well?”

“Well, you give ‘em a couple of hours of it, perhaps, and then dry them
and feed them, and give them a spell, and then bring them out again.
They soon get to know what you want; but you can’t break in horses
on the move. The shifting and worry and noise and excitement put it all
out of their heads. We have a fixed camp where we break them in.
And a horse may know his work perfectly well when there is no one about,
but bring him into the ring at night, and he is all abroad.”

“Do you have to give them much whip?”

“Not much. If a horse doesn’t know what you want him to do,
it only ruins him to whip him. But once he does a thing a few times,
and then won’t do it, then you must whip him.”

“What about trick horses?”

“A trick horse rolls a barrel, or lies down and goes to bed with the clown,
or fires a pistol — does any trick like that. Some small circuses
make the same horses do both trick and ring work, but it isn’t a good line.
A horse is all the better to have only one line of business –
same as a man.”

“How do you teach them tricks?”

“Oh, it takes a long time and a lot of hard work and great patience.
Even to make a horse lie down when he’s ordered takes a couple of months
sometimes. To make a horse lie down, you strap up one leg,
and then pull his head round; after a while he gets so tired
of the strained position that he lies down, after which
he learns to do it at command. If you want him to pick up a handkerchief,
you put a bit of carrot in it, and after a while they know
that you want them to pick it up — but it takes a long time.
Then a strange hand in the ring will flurry them,
and if anything goes wrong, they get all abroad. A good active pony,
with a bit of Arab blood in him, is the best for tricks.”

“What’s a school horse?”

“Ah, that’s a line of business that isn’t appreciated enough out here.
On the Continent they think a lot of them. A school horse is one
that is taught to do passaging, to change his feet at command,
to move sideways and backwards; in fact, to drill. Out here
no one thinks much of it. But in Germany, where everyone goes through
military riding schools, they do. The Germans are the best horse-trainers
in the world; and the big German circus-proprietors have men
to do all their business for them, while they just attend to the horses.”

“How long does it take to turn out a school horse?”

“Well, Chiarini was the best trainer out here, and he used to take
two years to get a horse to his satisfaction. For school horses, you must
have thoroughbreds, because their appearance is half their success.
We had a New Zealand thoroughbred that had raced, and was turning out
a splendid school horse, and he got burnt after costing a year’s training.
That’s the luck of the game, you know. You keep at it year after year,
and sometimes they die, and sometimes they get crippled –
it’s all in the luck of the game. You may give fifty pounds for a horse,
and find that he can never get over his fear of the elephant, while you
give ten pounds for another, and find him a ready-made performer almost.”

We passed out through the ghostly circus and the menagerie tent
down to the stable tent. There, among a lot of others,
a tranquil-looking animal was munching some feed, while in front of him
hung a placard, “Tiger Horse”.

“That’s a new sort! What is he, ring, trick, or school horse?”

“Well, he’s a class by himself. I suppose you’d call him a ring horse.
That’s the horse that the tiger rides on.”

“Did it take him long to learn that?”

“Well, it did not take this horse long; but we tried eleven others
before we could get one to stand it. They’re just like men, all different.
What one will stand another won’t look at. Well, good-bye.”

Just like men — no doubt; most men have to carry tigers of various sorts
through life to get a living.

The dog is a member of society who likes to have his day’s work,
and who does it more conscientiously than most human beings.
A dog always looks as if he ought to have a pipe in his mouth
and a black bag for his lunch, and then he would go quite happily to office
every day.

A dog without work is like a man without work, a nuisance to himself
and everybody else. People who live about town, and keep a dog
to give the children hydatids and to keep the neighbours awake at night,
imagine that the animal is fulfilling his destiny. All town dogs,
fancy dogs, show dogs, lap-dogs, and other dogs with no work to do,
should be abolished; it is only in the country that a dog has
any justification for his existence.

The old theory that animals have only instinct, not reason, to guide them,
is knocked endways by the dog. A dog can reason as well as a human being
on some subjects, and better on others, and the best reasoning dog of all
is the sheep-dog. The sheep-dog is a professional artist with a pride
in his business. Watch any drover’s dogs bringing sheep into the yards.
How thoroughly they feel their responsibility, and how very annoyed
they get if a stray dog with no occupation wants them to stop
and fool about! They snap at him and hurry off, as much as to say:
“You go about your idleness. Don’t you see this is my busy day?”

Sheep-dogs are followers of Thomas Carlyle. They hold that
the only happiness for a dog in this life is to find his work and to do it.
The idle, `dilettante’, non-working, aristocratic dog they have no use for.

The training of a sheep-dog for his profession begins at a very early age.
The first thing is to take him out with his mother and let him see
her working. He blunders lightheartedly, frisking along
in front of the horse, and his owner tries to ride over him,
and generally succeeds. It is amusing to see how that knocks all the gas
out of a puppy, and with what a humble air he falls to the rear
and glues himself to the horse’s heels, scarcely daring to look
to the right or to the left, for fear of committing some other breach
of etiquette.

He has had his first lesson — to keep behind the horse until he is wanted.
Then he watches the old slut work, and is allowed to go with her
round the sheep; and if he shows any disposition to get out of hand
and frolic about, the old lady will bite him sharply to prevent
his interfering with her work.

By degrees, slowly, like any other professional, he learns his business.
He learns to bring sheep after a horse simply at a wave of the hand;
to force the mob up to a gate where they can be counted or drafted;
to follow the scent of lost sheep, and to drive sheep through a town
without any master, one dog going on ahead to block the sheep from
turning off into by-streets while the other drives them on from the rear.

How do they learn all these things? Dogs for show work
are taught painstakingly by men who are skilled in handling them;
but, after all, they teach themselves more than the men teach them.
It looks as if the acquired knowledge of generations were transmitted
from dog to dog. The puppy, descended from a race of sheep-dogs,
starts with all his faculties directed towards the working of sheep;
he is half-educated as soon as he is born. He can no more help
working sheep than a born musician can help being musical,
or a Hebrew can help gathering in shekels. It is bred in him.
If he can’t get sheep to work, he will work a fowl;
often and often one can see a collie pup painstakingly and carefully
driving a bewildered old hen into a stable, or a stock-yard,
or any other enclosed space on which he has fixed his mind.
How does he learn to do that? He didn’t learn it at all.
The knowledge was born with him.

When the dog has been educated, or has educated himself,
he enjoys his work; but very few dogs like work “in the yards”.
The sun is hot, the dust rises in clouds, and there is nothing to do
but bark, bark, bark — which is all very well for learners and amateurs,
but is beneath the dignity of the true professional sheep-dog.
When they are hoarse with barking and nearly choked with dust,
the men lose their tempers and swear at them, and throw clods of earth
at them, and sing out to them “Speak up, blast you!”

Then the dogs suddenly decide that they have done enough for the day.
Watching their opportunity, they silently steal over the fence,
and hide in any cool place they can find. After a while the men notice
that hardly any are left, and operations are suspended while
a great hunt is made into outlying pieces of cover, where the dogs
are sure to be found lying low and looking as guilty as so many thieves.
A clutch at the scruff of the neck, a kick in the ribs, and they are
hauled out of hiding-places; and accompany their masters to the yard
frolicking about and pretending that they are quite delighted to be
going back, and only hid in those bushes out of sheer thoughtlessness.
He is a champion hypocrite, is the dog.

Dogs, like horses, have very keen intuition. They know when the men
around them are frightened, though they may not know the cause.
In a great Queensland strike, when the shearers attacked and burnt
Dagworth shed, some rifle-volleys were exchanged. The air was full
of human electricity, each man giving out waves of fear and excitement.
Mark now the effect it had on the dogs. They were not in the fighting;
nobody fired at them, and nobody spoke to them; but every dog
left his master, left the sheep, and went away to the homestead,
about six miles off. There wasn’t a dog about the shed next day
after the fight. The noise of the rifles had not frightened them,
because they were well-accustomed to that.*

* The same thing happened constantly with horses in the South African War.
A loose horse would feed contentedly while our men were firing,
but when our troops were being fired at the horses became uneasy,
and the loose ones would trot away. The excitement of the men
communicated itself to them.

Dogs have an amazing sense of responsibility. Sometimes,
when there are sheep to be worked, an old slut who has young puppies
may be greatly exercised in her mind whether she should go out or not.
On the one hand, she does not care about leaving the puppies, on the other,
she feels that she really ought to go rather than allow the sheep
to be knocked about by those learners. Hesitatingly, with many a look
behind her, she trots out after the horses and the other dogs.
An impassioned appeal from the head boundary rider,
“Go back home, will yer!” is treated with the contempt it deserves.
She goes out to the yards, works, perhaps half the day,
and then slips quietly under the fences and trots off home, contented.

The sheep-dog and the cattle-dog are the workmen of the animal kingdom;
sporting and fighting dogs are the professionals and artists.

A house-dog or a working-dog will only work for his master;
a professional or artistic dog will work for anybody, so long as he
is treated like an artist. A man going away for a week’s shooting
can borrow a dog, and the dog will work for him loyally, just as
a good musician will do his best, though the conductor is strange to him,
and the other members of the band are not up to the mark.
The musician’s art is sacred to him, and that is the case with the dog –
Art before everything.

It is a grand sight to see a really good setter or pointer
working up to a bird, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see
if the man with the gun has not lost himself. He throws his whole soul
into his work, questing carefully over the cold scent, feathering eagerly
when the bird is close, and at last drawing up like a statue.
Not Paganini himself ever lost himself in his art more thoroughly than does
humble Spot or Ponto. It is not amusement and not a mere duty to him;
it is a sacred gift, which he is bound to exercise.

A pointer in need of amusement will play with another dog –
the pair pretending to fight, and so on, but when there is work to be done,
the dog is lost in the artist. How crestfallen he looks if by any chance
he blunders on to a bird without pointing it! A fiddler who has played
a wrong note in a solo is the only creature who can look
quite so discomfited. Humanity, instead of going to the ant for wisdom,
should certainly go to the dog.

Sporting dogs are like other artists, in that they are apt to get careless
of everything except their vocation. They are similarly
quite unreliable in their affections. They are not good watch dogs,
and take little interest in chasing cats. They look on a little dog
that catches rats much as a great musician looks on a cricketer –
it’s clever, but it isn’t Art.

Hunting and fighting dogs are the gladiators of the animal world.
A fox-hound or a kangaroo-dog is always of the same opinion
as Mr. Jorrocks: — “All time is wasted what isn’t spent in ‘untin’.”

A greyhound will start out in the morning with three lame legs,
but as soon as he sees a hare start he MUST go. He utterly forgets
his sorrows in the excitement, just as a rowing-man, all over
boils and blisters, will pull a desperate race without feeling any pain.
Such dogs are not easily excited by anything but a chase,
and a burglar might come and rob the house and murder the inmates
without arousing any excitement among them. Guarding a house
is “not their pidgin” as the Chinese say. That is one great reason
for the success of the dog at whatever branch of his tribe’s work
he goes in for — he is so thorough. Dogs who are forced to combine
half-a-dozen professions never make a success at anything.
One dog one billet is their motto.

The most earnest and thorough of all the dog tribe is the fighting dog.
His intense self-respect, his horror of brawling, his cool determination,
make him a pattern to humanity. The bull-dog or bull-terrier is generally
the most friendly and best-tempered dog in the world; but when he
is put down in the ring he fights till he drops, in grim silence,
though his feet are bitten through and through, his ears are in rags,
and his neck a hideous mass of wounds.

In a well-conducted dog-fight each dog in turn has to attack the other dog,
and one can see fierce earnestness blazing in the eye of the attacker
as he hurls himself on the foe. What makes him fight like that? It is not
bloodthirstiness, because they are neither savage nor quarrelsome dogs:
a bulldog will go all his life without a fight, unless put into a ring.
It is simply their strong self-respect and stubborn pride which will not
let them give in. The greyhound snaps at his opponent and then runs
for his life, but the fighting dog stands to it till death.

Just occasionally one sees the same type of human being –
some quiet-spoken, good-tempered man who has taken up glove-fighting
for a living, and who, perhaps, gets pitted against a man a shade better
than himself. After a few rounds he knows he is overmatched, but there is
something at the back of his brain that will not let him cave in.
Round after round he stands punishment, and round after round
he grimly comes up, till, possibly, his opponent loses heart,
or a fluky hit turns the scale in his favour. These men are to be found
in every class of life. Many of the gamest of the game are mere
gutter-bred boys who will continue to fight long after they have endured
enough punishment to entitle them to quit.

You can see in their eyes the same hard glitter that shows
in the bulldog’s eyes as he limps across the ring, or in the eye
of the racehorse as he lies down to it when his opponent is outpacing him.
It is grit, pluck, vim, nerve force; call it what you like,
and there is no created thing that has more of it than the dog.

The blood-lust is a dog-phase that has never been quite understood.
Every station-owner knows that sometimes the house-dogs are liable to take
a sudden fit of sheep-killing. Any kind of dog will do it,
from the collie downward. Sometimes dogs from different homesteads meet
in the paddocks, having apparently arranged the whole affair beforehand.
They are very artful about it, too. They lie round the house till dark,
and then slink off and have a wild night’s blood-spree,
running down the wretched sheep and tearing their throats open;
before dawn they slink back again and lie around the house as before.
Many and many a sheep-owner has gone out with a gun
and shot his neighbour’s dogs for killing sheep which his own wicked,
innocent-looking dogs had slain.

The sporting men of Mulligan’s were an exceedingly knowing lot;
in fact, they had obtained the name amongst their neighbours
of being a little bit too knowing. They had “taken down”
the adjoining town in a variety of ways. They were always winning
maiden plates with horses which were shrewdly suspected to be old
and well-tried performers in disguise.

When the sports of Paddy’s Flat unearthed a phenomenal runner in the shape
of a blackfellow called Frying-pan Joe, the Mulligan contingent
immediately took the trouble to discover a blackfellow of their own,
and they made a match and won all the Paddy’s Flat money
with ridiculous ease; then their blackfellow turned out to be
a well-known Sydney performer. They had a man who could fight,
a man who could be backed to jump five-feet-ten, a man who could
kill eight pigeons out of nine at thirty yards, a man who could make
a break of fifty or so at billiards if he tried; they could all drink,
and they all had that indefinite look of infinite wisdom
and conscious superiority which belongs only to those who know something
about horseflesh.

They knew a great many things never learnt at Sunday-school.
They were experts at cards and dice. They would go to immense trouble
to work off any small swindle in the sporting line.
In short the general consensus of opinion was that they were
a very “fly” crowd at Mulligan’s, and if you went there you wanted to
“keep your eyes skinned” or they’d “have” you over a threepenny-bit.

There were races at Sydney one Christmas, and a select band of
the Mulligan sportsmen were going down to them. They were in high feather,
having just won a lot of money from a young Englishman at pigeon-shooting,
by the simple method of slipping blank cartridges into his gun
when he wasn’t looking, and then backing the bird.

They intended to make a fortune out of the Sydney people,
and admirers who came to see them off only asked them as a favour
to leave money enough in Sydney to make it worth while
for another detachment to go down later on. Just as the train
was departing a priest came running on to the platform,
and was bundled into the carriage where our Mulligan friends were;
the door was slammed to, and away they went. His Reverence was hot
and perspiring, and for a few minutes mopped himself with a handkerchief,
while the silence was unbroken except by the rattle of the train.

After a while one of the Mulligan fraternity got out a pack of cards
and proposed a game to while away the time. There was a young squatter
in the carriage who looked as if he might be induced to lose a few pounds,
and the sportsmen thought they would be neglecting their opportunities
if they did not try to “get a bit to go on with” from him.
He agreed to play, and, just as a matter of courtesy, they asked the priest
whether he would take a hand.

“What game d’ye play?” he asked, in a melodious brogue.

They explained that any game was equally acceptable to them,
but they thought it right to add that they generally played for money.

“Sure an’ it don’t matter for wanst in a way,” said he –
“Oi’ll take a hand bedad — Oi’m only going about fifty miles,
so Oi can’t lose a fortune.”

They lifted a light portmanteau on to their knees to make a table,
and five of them — three of the Mulligan crowd and the two strangers –
started to have a little game of poker. Things looked rosy
for the Mulligan boys, who chuckled as they thought how soon
they were making a beginning, and what a magnificent yarn they would have
to tell about how they rooked a priest on the way down.

Nothing sensational resulted from the first few deals, and the priest began
to ask questions.

“Be ye going to the races?”

They said they were.

“Ah! and Oi suppose ye’ll be betting wid thim bookmakers –
betting on the horses, will yez? They do be terrible knowing men,
thim bookmakers, they tell me. I wouldn’t bet much if Oi was ye,” he said,
with an affable smile. “If ye go bettin’ ye will be took in
wid thim bookmakers.”

The boys listened with a bored air and reckoned that by the time
they parted the priest would have learnt that they were well able
to look after themselves. They went steadily on with the game,
and the priest and the young squatter won slightly; this was part
of the plan to lead them on to plunge. They neared the station
where the priest was to get out. He had won rather more than they liked,
so the signal was passed round to “put the cross on”. Poker is a game
at which a man need not risk much unless he feels inclined,
and on this deal the priest stood out. Consequently,
when they drew up at his station he was still a few pounds in.

“Bedad,” he said, “Oi don’t loike goin’ away wid yer money.
Oi’ll go on to the next station so as ye can have revinge.”
Then he sat down again, and play went on in earnest.

The man of religion seemed to have the Devil’s own luck. When he was dealt
a good hand he invariably backed it well, and if he had a bad one
he would not risk anything. The sports grew painfully anxious
as they saw him getting further and further ahead of them,
prattling away all the time like a big schoolboy. The squatter was
the biggest loser so far, but the priest was the only winner.
All the others were out of pocket. His reverence played with great dash,
and seemed to know a lot about the game, so that on arrival
at the second station he was a good round sum in pocket.

He rose to leave them with many expressions of regret, and laughingly
promised full revenge next time. Just as he was opening the carriage door,
one of the Mulligan fraternity said in a stage-whisper:
“He’s a blanky sink-pocket. If he can come this far,
let him come on to Sydney and play for double the stakes.”
Like a shot the priest turned on him.

“Bedad, an’ if THAT’S yer talk, Oi’ll play ye fer double stakes
from here to the other side of glory. Do yez think men are mice
because they eat cheese? It isn’t one of the Ryans would be fearing
to give any man his revinge!”

He snorted defiance at them, grabbed his cards and waded in.
The others felt that a crisis was at hand and settled down to play
in a dead silence. But the priest kept on winning steadily,
and the “old man” of the Mulligan push saw that something decisive
must be done, and decided on a big plunge to get all the money back
on one hand. By a dexterous manipulation of the cards
he dealt himself four kings, almost the best hand at poker.
Then he began with assumed hesitation to bet on his hand,
raising the stake little by little.

“Sure ye’re trying to bluff, so ye are!” said the priest,
and immediately raised it.

The others had dropped out of the game and watched with painful interest
the stake grow and grow. The Mulligan fraternity felt a cheerful certainty
that the “old man” had made things safe, and regarded themselves
as mercifully delivered from an unpleasant situation. The priest went on
doggedly raising the stake in response to his antagonist’s challenges
until it had attained huge dimensions.

“Sure that’s high enough,” said he, putting into the pool
sufficient to entitle him to see his opponent’s hand.

The “old man” with great gravity laid down his four kings,
whereat the Mulligan boys let a big sigh of relief escape them.

Then the priest laid down four aces and scooped the pool.

The sportsmen of Mulligan’s never quite knew how they got out to Randwick.
They borrowed a bit of money in Sydney, and found themselves
in the saddling-paddock in a half-dazed condition, trying to realize
what had happened to them. During the afternoon they were up at the end
of the lawn near the Leger stand and could hear the babel of tongues,
small bookmakers, thimble riggers, confidence men, and so on,
plying their trades outside. In the tumult of voices they heard one
that sounded familiar. Soon suspicion grew into certainty,
and they knew that it was the voice of “Father” Ryan.
They walked to the fence and looked over. This is what he was saying: –

“Pop it down, gents! Pop it down! If you don’t put down a brick
you can’t pick up a castle! I’ll bet no one here can pick
the knave of hearts out of these three cards. I’ll bet half-a-sovereign
no one here can find the knave!”

Then the crowd parted a little, and through the opening
they could see him distinctly, doing a great business
and showing wonderful dexterity with the pasteboard.

There is still enough money in Sydney to make it worth while
for another detachment to come down from Mulligan’s; but the next lot
will hesitate about playing poker with priests in the train.