ng (and one or two great grown-up diggers also) that night in
that circus.

"Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now", was a sacred song then,
not a peg for vulgar parodies and more vulgar "business" for fourth-rate
clowns and corner-men. Then there was "The Prairie Flower". "Out on the
Prairie, in an Early Day"--I can hear the digger's wife yet: she was the
prettiest girl on the field. They married on the sly and crept into
camp after dark; but the diggers got wind of it and rolled up with
gold-dishes, shovels, &c., &c., and gave them a real good tinkettling in
the old-fashioned style, and a nugget or two to start housekeeping on.
She had a very sweet voice.

Fair as a lily, joyous and free,
Light of the prairie home was she.

She's a "granny" now, no doubt--or dead.

And I remember a poor, brutally ill-used little wife, wearing a black
eye mostly, and singing "Love Amongst the Roses" at her work. And they
sang the "Blue Tail Fly", and all the first and best coon songs--in the
days when old John Brown sank a duffer on the hill.

. . . . .

The great bark kitchen of Granny Mathews' "Redclay Inn". A fresh
back-log thrown behind the fire, which lights the room fitfully. Company
settled down to pipes, subdued yarning, and reverie.

Flash Jack--red sash, cabbage-tree hat on back of head with nothing
in it, glossy black curls bunched up in front of brim. Flash Jack
volunteers, without invitation, preparation, or warning, and through his
nose:

Hoh!--
There was a wild kerlonial youth,
John Dowlin was his name!
He bountied on his parients,
Who lived in Castlemaine!

and so on to--

He took a pistol from his breast
And waved that lit--tle toy--

"Little toy" with an enthusiastic flourish and great unction on Flash
Jack's part--

"I'll fight, but I won't surrender!" said
The wild Kerlonial Boy.

Even this fails to rouse the company's enthusiasm. "Give us a song, Abe!
Give us the 'Lowlands'!" Abe Mathews, bearded and grizzled, is lying
on the broad of his back on a bench, with his hands clasped under his
head--his favourite position for smoking, reverie, yarning, or singing.
He had a strong, deep voice, which used to thrill me through and
through, from hair to toenails, as a child.

They bother Abe till he takes his pipe out of his mouth and puts it
behind his head on the end of the stool:

The ship was built in Glasgow;
'Twas the "Golde