nd how she broke down and cried, and could in her turn have
worshipped those men--loved them, every one. They were boys all, and
gentlemen all. There were college men, artists, poets, musicians,
journalists--Bohemians all. Men from all the lands and one. They
understood art--and poverty was dead.

And perhaps the old mate would say slyly, but with a sad, quiet smile:

"Have you got that bit of straw yet, Tom?"

Those old mates had each three pasts behind them. The two they told each
other when they became mates, and the one they had shared.

And when the visitor had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man
would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the
fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps.

Those old mates of our father's are getting few and far between, and
only happen along once in a way to keep the old man's memory fresh, as
it were. We met one to-day, and had a yarn with him, and afterwards we
got thinking, and somehow began to wonder whether those ancient friends
of ours were, or were not, better and kinder to their mates than we of
the rising generation are to our fathers; and the doubt is painfully on
the wrong side.

SETTLING ON THE LAND

The worst bore in Australia just now is the man who raves about getting
the people on the land, and button-holes you in the street with a little
scheme of his own. He generally does not know what he is talking about.

There is in Sydney a man named Tom Hopkins who settled on the land once,
and sometimes you can get him to talk about it. He did very well at his
trade in the city, years ago, until he began to think that he could do
better up-country. Then he arranged with his sweetheart to be true to
him and wait whilst he went west and made a home. She drops out of the
story at this point.

He selected on a run at Dry Hole Creek, and for months awaited the
arrival of the government surveyors to fix his boundaries; but they
didn't come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up
within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and
started farming operations.

Does the reader know what grubbing means? Tom does. He found the
biggest, ugliest, and most useless trees on his particular piece of
ground; also the greatest number of adamantine stumps. He started
without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice
from men who knew less about farming than he did. He found a soft
place between two ro