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.
