Such Is Life - Joseph Furphy (philippa perry book txt) š
- Author: Joseph Furphy
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āThe Jackdaw of Rheims is a case in point,ā remarked Willoughby aside to me.
āWell,ā said Price emphatically, and qualifying every word that would bear qualification, āso fur as workinā on Sundays goes, Iām well sure I allus worked on Sundays, anā Iām well sure I allus will; anā Iām well sure āere aināt no cuss on me. Why, I dunno what the (complicated expletive) a cuss is! Iāll get a blanket fer to lay on,ā he added; āthis groundās sorter damp.ā And he went across to his wagon.
āHeās got a curse on him as big as Mount Macedon, and he doesnāt know it,ā muttered Thompson.
āBearing out the prophecy,ā said I aside to Willoughby, āthat the sinner, being a hundred years old, shall be accursed.ā
āYou ought to show him a bit more respect, Mosey,ā remarked Cooper gravely.
āWell, to tell you the truth,ā replied Mosey frankly, āI got no patience with the ole bunyip. Canāt suffer fools, no road.ā
āWell, I donāt want to be shovinā in my jor, but Iād take him to be more rogue than fool,ā suggested Bum.
āTime he was thinkinā about repentinā, anyhow,ā observed Dixon.
āNow, really Thompsonā ādo you believe in these special malisons?ā asked Willoughby, as Price rejoined the company. āAre you so superstitious? I shouldnāt have thought it.ā
āIāve good reason to believe in them,ā replied Thompson. āYou asked me this morning why I didnāt have two teams. Now Iāll tell you the reason. Itās because Iām not allowed to keep two teams. Iāve got a curse on me. Many a long year ago, when I finished my second season, I found myself at Moama, with a hundred and ten notes to the good, and the prospect of going straight ahead, like the cube rootā āor the square of the hypotenuse, is it? I forget the exact term, but no matter. Well, the curse came on me in this way: Charley Webber, the young fellow I was travelling with, got a letter from some relations in New Zealand, advising him to settle there; so he offered me his plant for two-thirds of its valueā āfifty notes down and fifty more when he would send for it. Sheer good-nature of him, for he knew he could have the lot if he liked. But thereās not many fellows of Charleyās stamp. So I paid him the fifty notes and we parted. He was to send me his address as soon as he reached New Zealand; but he never got there. The vessel was wrecked on some place they call the North Spit; and Charley was one of the missing. Never heard of him from that day to this.ā
āGood (ensanguined) shot!ā remarked Mosey. āI wish that same specie of a curse would come on me.ā
āMy (ensanguined) colonial!ā assented Dixon and Bum, with one accord.
āWell, nobody knows anything about the geography of New Zealand,ā continued Thompson, āand I purposely forgot the address of Charleyās people. Any honest man would have hunted them up, but that wasnāt my style; I wasnāt a wheat-sample; I was a tare. Compromised with my conscience. Thought there was no time to lose in making an independenceā āmaking haste to be rich, and considering not thatās thereās many a slip between the cup and the lip, as Solomon puts it. I said to myself, āThatās all right; Iāll pay it some time.ā Now see the consequenceā āā
āJust two years after I bid the poor fellow goodbye-two years to the very day, and not very lucky years neitherā āI found myself in the middle of the Death Track, with flour for Wilcannia; one wagon left behind, and the bullocks dropping off like fish out of water; bullocks worth ten notes going as if they werenāt worth half-a-crown. It was like the retreat from Moscow. Finally, I lost fourteen on the tripā āexactly the number I had got dishonestly. As for the second wagon, I gave it to Baxter for fetching the load the last fifty mile. I thought this might clear away the curse, so I didnāt fret over it. I felt as if Charley had got satisfaction. But I wasnāt going to get off so cheap. Two years afterwardā āyou remember, Dixon?ā āI bought that thin team and the Melbourne wagon from Pribble, the contractor. Dixon, here, was driving for Pribble at that very time, and he can tell you how Dick the Devil cleaned me out of my fine old picked team and the new wagon, leaving me to begin afresh with the remains of Pribbleās skeletons and my own old wagon. Then a year or two afterward, I went in debt to buy that plant of Mulliganāsā āhim that was killed off the colt at Mossgielā āand that same winter the pleuro broke out in my lot, and they went like rotten sheep till fourteen were gone; and then, of course, the plague was stopped. Not having any use for Mulliganās wagon, I swapped her for a new thirty-by-twenty-four wool-rag, and a Wagga pot, good for eight or ten mile on a still night; and, within a month, Ramsayās punt went down with my wagon; sheās in the bottom of the Murrumbidgee now, with eight ton of bricks to steady her, and the tarpaulin and bell to keep her company. Sheāll be fetching the most critical planks out of a steamer some of these times, and Iāll get seven years for leaving her there. Afterward, when I was hauling logs for pontooning, on the Goulburn, I kept buying up steers and breaking them in, till I had two twelves; and one day I left sixteen of them standing in yoke while I went looking round for a good log; and suddenly I heard a
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