酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Over the Sliprails-Part13_Henry Lawson(1867-1922)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页


as his own especial property, which we thought was the best thing to do

under the circumstances. Uncle wanted those shears badly, so he received us



with the buggy whip -- and he didn't draw the colour line either.

All that night and next day I wished he had. I was sent home,



and Joe went droving with uncle soon after that, else I might have

lived a life of freedom and content and died out peacefully



with the last of my adopted tribe.

Joe died of consumption on the track. When he was dying uncle asked:



"Is there anything you would like?"

And Joe said: "I'd like a lilly drap o' rum, boss."



Which were his last words, for he drank the rum and died peacefully.

I was the first to hear the news at home, and, being still a youngster,



I ran to the house, crying "Oh, mother! aunt's Joe is dead!"

There were visitors at our place at the time, and, as the eldest child



of the maternal aunt in question had also been christened Joe

-- after a grandfather of our tribe (my tribe, not Black Joe's) --



the news caused a sudden and unpleasantsensation. But cross-examination

explained the mistake, and I retired to the rear of the pig-sty,



as was my custom when things went wrong, with another cause for grief.

They Wait on the Wharf in Black



"Seems to me that honest, hard-working men seem to accumulate

the heaviest swags of trouble in this world." -- Steelman.



Told by Mitchell's Mate.

We were coming back from West Australia, steerage -- Mitchell, the Oracle,



and I. I had gone over saloon, with a few pounds in my pocket.

Mitchell said this was a great mistake -- I should have gone over steerage



with nothing but the clothes I stood upright in, and come back saloon

with a pile. He said it was a very common mistake that men made,



but, as far as his experience went, there always seemed to be

a deep-rooted popular prejudice in favour of going away from home



with a few pounds in one's pocket and coming back stumped;

at least amongst rovers and vagabonds like ourselves -- it wasn't



so generally popular or admired at home, or in the places we came back to,

as it was in the places we went to. Anyway it went, there wasn't



the slightest doubt that our nearest and dearest friends were, as a rule,

in favour of our taking away as little as we could possibly manage with,



and coming back with a pile, whether we came back saloon or not;

and that ought to settle the matter as far as any chap that had



the slightest consideration for his friends or family was concerned.

There was a good deal of misery, underneath, coming home in that steerage.



One man had had his hand crushed and amputated out Coolgardie way,

and the stump had mortified, and he was being sent to Melbourne by his mates.



Some had lost their money, some a couple of years of their life,

some their souls; but none seemed to have lost the heart



to call up the quiet grin that southern rovers, vagabonds,

travellers for "graft" or fortune, and professional wanderers wear



in front of it all. Except one man -- an elderly eastern digger --

he had lost his wife in Sydney while he was away.



They sent him a wire to the Boulder Soak, or somewhere

out back of White Feather, to say that his wife was seriously ill;



but the wire went wrong, somehow, after the manner of telegrams not connected

with mining, on the lines of "the Western". They sent him a wire



to say that his wife was dead, and that reached him all right --

only a week late.



I can imagine it. He got the message at dinner-time,

or when they came back to the camp. His mate wanted him



to sit in the shade, or lie in the tent, while he got the billy boiled.

"You must brace up and pull yourself together, Tom, for the sake



of the youngsters." And Tom for long intervals goes walking up and down,

up and down, by the camp -- under the brassy sky or the gloaming --



under the brilliant star-clusters that hang over the desert plain,

but never raising his eyes to them; kicking a tuft of grass



or a hole in the sand now and then, and seeming to watch

the progress of the track he is tramping out. The wife of twenty years



was with him -- though two thousand miles away -- till that message came.

I can imagine Tome sitting with his mates round the billy,



they talking in quiet, subdued tones about the track,

the departure of coaches, trains and boats -- arranging for



Tom's journey East, and the working of the claim in his absence.

Or Tom lying on his back in his bunk, with his hands under his head



and his eyes fixed on the calico above -- thinking, thinking, thinking.

Thinking, with a touch of his boyhood's faith perhaps;



or wondering what he had done in his long, hard-working married life,

that God should do this thing to him now, of all times.






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号