so long since the British were savages.

I got a letter last year from a mate of mine in Western
Australia--prospecting the awful desert out beyond White
Feather--telling me all about a "perish" he did on plum pudding. He
and his mates were camped at the Boulder Soak with some three or four
hundred miles--mostly sand and dust--between them and the nearest
grocer's shop. They ordered a case of mixed canned provisions from
Perth to reach them about Christmas. They didn't believe in plum
pudding--there are a good many British institutions that bushmen don't
believe in but the cook was a new chum, and he said he'd go home to his
mother if he didn't have plum pudding for Christmas, so they ordered
a can for him. Meanwhile, they hung out on kangaroo and damper and the
knowledge that it couldn't last for ever. It was in a terrible drought,
and the kangaroos used to come into the "Soak" for water, and they were
too weak to run. Later on, when wells were dug, the kangaroos used to
commit suicide in them--there was generally a kangaroo in the well in
the morning.

The storekeeper packed the case of tinned dog, etc., but by some blunder
he or his man put the label on the wrong box, and it went per rail, per
coach, per camel, and the last stage per boot, and reached my friends'
camp on Christmas Eve, to their great joy. My friend broke the case open
by the light of the camp-fire.

"Here, Jack!" he said, tossing out a can, "here's your plum pudding."

He held the next can in his hand a moment longer and read the label
twice.

"Why! he's sent two," he said, "and I'm sure I only ordered one. Never
mind--Jack'll have a tuck-out."

He held the next can close to the fire and blinked at it hard. "I'm
damned if he hasn't sent three tins of plum pudding. Never mind, we'll
manage to scoff some of it between us. You're in luck's way this trip,
Jack, and no mistake."

He looked harder still at the fourth can; then he read the labels on the
other tins again to see if he'd made a mistake.

He didn't tell me what he said then, but a milder mate suggested that
the storekeeper had sent half a dozen tins by mistake. But when they
reached the seventh can the language was not even fit to be written down
on a piece of paper and handed up to the magistrate. The storekeeper had
sent them an unbroken case of canned plum pudding, and probably by this
time he was wondering what had become of that blanky case of duff.

The kangaroos disappeared ab