giving him a drop to drink; but he didn't mind
that when they hadn't got it to give.'

The wandering, unrestrained life was probably to his mind; and I do not
think there is a word of discontent or complaint in any of his verses,
though he was always poor, and must often have known hardship. In the
'Talk with the Bush,' he describes in his whimsical, exaggerated way, a
wetting, which must have been one of very many.

'It chanced that I was travelling and the rain was heavy; I stepped
aside, and not without reason, till I'd get a wall or a bush that
would shelter me.

'I didn't meet at the side of a gap only an old, withered,
miserable bush by the side of the wall, and it bent with the west
wind. I stepped under it, and it was a wet place; torrents of rain
coming down from all quarters, east and west and straight
downwards; its equal I couldn't see, unless it is seeds winnowed
through a riddle. It was sharp, angry, fierce, and stormy, like a
deer running and racing past me. The storm was drowning the
country, and my case was pitiful, and I suffering without cause.

'An hour and a quarter it was raining; there isn't a drop that fell
but would fill a quart and put a heap on it afterwards; there's not
a wheat or rape mill in the neighbourhood but it would set going in
the middle of a field.'

At last relief comes:--

'It was shortly then the rain grew weak, the sun shone, and the
wind rose. I moved on, and I smothered and drowned in wet, till I
came to a little house, and there was a welcome before me. Many
quarts of water I squeezed from my skirt and my cape. I hung my hat
on a nail, and I lying in a sweet flowery bed. But I was up again
in a little while. We began sports and pleasures; and it was with
pride we spent the night.'

But there is a verse in his 'Argument with Whisky' that seems to have a
wistful thought in it, perhaps of the settled home of his rival,
Callinan:--

'Cattle is a nice thing for a man to have, and his share of land to
reap wheat and barley. Money in the chest, and a fire in the
evening time; and to be able to give shelter to a man on his road;
a hat and shoes in the fashion--I think, indeed, that would be much
better than to be going from place to place drinking _uisge
beatha_.'

And there is a little sadness in the verses he made in some house, wh