a failure, only
used by weak-minded men, who have no opinion of their own. Thus, if you
have a chance of selling your station at fifteen shillings, and buying
in, close to a new gold-field on the same terms, where fat sheep are
going to the butcher at from eighteen shillings to a pound, butter,
eggs, and garden produce at famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and
renders you uncertain and miserable by saying that "rolling stone
gathers no moss;" as if you wanted moss! Again, having worked harder
than the Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie in bed
till eleven o'clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half-past
seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep out an hour
or so of the heat, and informs you that the "early bird gets the
worms." I had a partner, who bought in after Jim Stockbridge was
killed, who was always flying this early bird, when he couldn't sleep
for musquitoes. I have got rid of him now; but for the two years he was
with me, the dearest wish of my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua
could have had a quiet two minutes with that early bird before any one
was up to separate them. I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as
"the late early bird" after that. In short, I consider proverbs as the
refuge of weak minds.

The infinite sagacity of the above remarks cannot be questioned; their
application may. I will proceed to give it. I have written down the
above tirade nearly, as far as I can guess, a printed pageful (may be a
little more, looking at it again), in order to call down the wrath of
all wise men, if any such have done me the honour of getting so far in
these volumes, on the most trashy and false proverb of the whole:
"Coming events cast their shadows before."

Now, they don't, you know. They never did, and never will. I myself
used to be a strong believer in pre-(what's the word?--prevarications,
predestinations)--no--presentiments; until I found by experience that,
although I was always having presentiments, nothing ever came of them.
Sometimes somebody would walk over my grave, and give me a creeping in
the back, which, as far as I can find out, proceeded from not having my
braces properly buttoned behind. Sometimes I have heard the
death-watch, produced by a small spider (may the deuce confound him!),
not to mention many other presentiments and depressions of spirit,
which I am now firmly persuaded proceed from indigestion. I am far from
denying the p