r since have I seen such
energetic dancing as we used to have at those bull-dances of diggings
days. As the evening advanced and the liquor began to take effect,
disputes became more frequent, disputes that were as a rule, promptly
settled outside by a round of fisticuffs; but perhaps the best hated man
there was the trooper, who came in about nine o'clock, and monopolized
Pretty Lizzie. He was a big, fair man, this trooper--a gentleman
evidently, down on his luck, as many a gentleman was in those days, and
as evidently he was in love with Lizzie and she was in love with him.
Oh, the adoring glances she cast at him as they went down the room
together at a mad gallop. He got drunk as night advanced, and before I
left I was dimly conscious of a dark corner where a sobbing woman was
putting a pillow beneath the head of her insensible lover. Poor Pretty
Lizzie, spite of it all, she married him; and ten years later I saw her
again, the weary looking, draggle-tailed landlady of a wayside shanty,
with half a dozen small children hanging on to her skirts and a drunken
husband lolling in the bar. Poor Pretty Lizzie, she was worthy of a
better fate.

I 'm afraid I must confess I don't remember much about the close of the
evening. I wanted to dance with Lizzie, and when she would have none of
me I consoled myself with the flowing bowl to such an extent that when
by-and-by Dick, suggesting we should go home, took me by the arm and led
me into the open air, I found the ground was rising up to meet me, and I
remarked to my mate I thought that the moon must be getting old, she was
so remarkably unsteady on her legs. I retired to my tent to wake up next
morning with a splitting headache, as a pleasing reminiscence of the
revel of the night before.

I am not a digger now. Long since I abandoned the pick and shovel for
more lucrative employment--so long since that it is only occasionally I
look back on my early days in the colony and my first Christmas on the
diggings.

Brendon and Son, Printers; Plymouth

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