Part 1

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THE COO-EE RECITER.

BY

AUSTRALIAN, BRITISH, AND AMERICAN AUTHORS.

_HUMOROUS, PATHETIC, DRAMATIC, DIALECT, RECITATIONS & READINGS._

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, MELBOURNE & TORONTO.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I Killed a Man at Graspan M. GROVER. Kitty O'Toole W. L. LUMLEY. The Ballad of the Drover HENRY LAWSON. The Rescue EDWARD DYSON. Saltbush Bill A. B. PATERSON. Drought and Doctrine. J. BRUNTON STEVENS. The Martyr VICTOR J. DALEY. The Carrying of the Baby ETHEL TURNER. The Old Gum FLORENCE BULLIVANT. Murphy shall not Sing To-night MONTAGUE GROVER. Christmas Bells JOHN B. O'HARA, M.A. Wool is Up GARNET WALCH. Wool is Down GARNET WALCH. The Highland Brigade Buries its Dead LIEUT.-COL. W. T. REAY. Australia's Call to Arms JOHN B. O'HARA, M.A. Good News GARNET WALCH. Free Trade _v._ Protection GARNET WALCH. The Lion's Cubs GARNET WALCH. The Little Duchess ETHEL TURNER. Australia's Springtime W. L. LUMLEY. The Man that saved the Match DAVID M'KEE WRIGHT. Ode for Commonwealth Day, 1st January, 1901. A Desperate Assault The Game of Life JOHN G. SAXE. Prejudice CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON. The Poor and the Rich JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. The Engineer's Story Seeing's not Believing. THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY. Caudle has been made a Mason DOUGLAS JERROLD. Mrs. Caudle's Lecture DOUGLAS JERROLD. Jim Bludso COLONEL JOHN HAY. How Uncle Mose Counted the Eggs The Negro Baby's Funeral. WILL CARLETON. Der Shpider und der Fly CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS. Lariat Bill G. W. H. The Elf Child; or, Little Orphant Annie JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY. Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS (Monk Lewis). An All-around Intellectual Man. TOM MASSON. Her Ideal KATE MASTERSON. The Happy Farmer. MORTIMER C. BROWN. The Son of a Soldier OWEN OLIVER. The Mile DAVID M'KEE WRIGHT.

THE COO-EE RECITER

_I KILLED A MAN AT GRASPAN._

(_The Tale of a Returned Australian Contingenter done into verse._)

I killed a man at Graspan, I killed him fair in fight; And the Empire's poets and the Empire's priests Swear blind I acted right. The Empire's poets and Empire's priests Make out my deed was fine, But they can't stop the eyes of the man I killed From starin' into mine.

I killed a man at Graspan, Maybe I killed a score; But this one wasn't a chance-shot home, From a thousand yards or more. I fired at him when he'd got no show; We were only a pace apart, With the cordite scorchin' his old worn coat As the bullet drilled his heart.

I killed a man at Graspan, I killed him fightin' fair; We came on each other face to face, An' we went at it then and there. Mine was the trigger that shifted first, His was the life that sped. An' a man I'd never a quarrel with Was spread on the boulders dead.

I killed a man at Graspan; I watched him squirmin' till He raised his eyes, an' they met with mine; An' there they're starin' still. Cut of my brother Tom, he looked, Hardly more'n a kid; An', Christ! he was stiffenin' at my feet Because of the thing I did.

I killed a man at Graspan; I told the camp that night; An' of all the lies that ever I told That was the poorest skite. I swore I was proud of my hand-to-hand, An' the Boer I'd chanced to pot, An' all the time I'd ha' gave my eyes To never ha' fired that shot.

I killed a man at Graspan; An hour ago about, For there he lies with his starin' eyes, An' his blood still tricklin' out. I know it was either him or me, I know that I killed him fair, But, all the same, wherever I look, The man that I killed is there.

I killed a man at Graspan; My first and, God! my last; Harder to dodge than my bullet is The look that his dead eyes cast. If the Empire asks for me later on It'll ask for me in vain, Before I reach to my bandolier To fire on a man again.

M. GROVER.

_KITTY O'TOOLE._

Och! a charmin' young cratur' was Kitty O'Toole, The lily ov shwate Tipperary; Wid a voice like a thrish, and wid cheeks like a rose, An' a figger as nate as a fairy! Oi saw her wan noight--och! she look'd loike a quane In the glory ov shwate wan an' twinty-- As she sat wid McGinty's big arm round her waisht, Och! how I invied McGinty!

Six months afther that, in the shwate summer days, The boys an' the girls wor' invoited By Micky O'Toole, ov the cabin beyant, To see Kate an' McGinty unoited; An' whin in the church they wor' made into wan, An' the priesht gave thim blissin's in plinty, An' Kitty look'd shwater than iver before-- Och! how I invied McGinty!

But the years have gone by, an' McGinty is dead! Och! me heart was all broke up wid pity To see her so lonely, an' mournful, an' sad, An' I wint an' got married to Kitty! But now, whin I look where McGinty is laid, Wid a shtone o'er his head cowld an' flinty-- As he lies there so peaceful, an' quoiet, an' shtill-- Och! how I invy McGinty.

W. L. LUMLEY.

_THE BALLAD OF THE DROVER._

BY HENRY LAWSON.

(_By kind permission of Messrs. Angus and Robertson, Publishers, Sydney and Melbourne._)

Across the stony ridges, Across the rolling plain, Young Harry Dale, the drover, Comes riding home again. And well his stock-horse bears him, And light of heart is he, And stoutly his old pack-horse Is trotting by his knee.

Up Queensland way with cattle He travelled regions vast; And many months have vanished Since home-folk saw him last. He hums a song of someone He hopes to marry soon; And hobble-chains and camp-ware Keep jingling to the tune.

Beyond the hazy dado Against the lower skies, And yon blue line of ranges, The homestead station lies. And thitherward the drover Jogs through the lazy noon, While hobble-chains and camp-ware Are jingling to a tune.

An hour has filled the heavens With storm-cloud inky black; At times the lightning trickles Around the drover's track, But Harry pushes onward; His horses' strength he tries In hope to reach the river Before the flood shall rise.

The thunder from above him Goes rolling o'er the plain; And down on thirsty pastures In torrents fall the rain. And every creek and gully Sends forth its little flood, Till the river runs a banker, All stained with yellow mud.

Now Harry speaks to Rover, The best dog on the plains; And to his hardy horses, And strokes their shaggy manes; "We've breasted bigger rivers When floods were at their height, Nor shall this gutter stop us From getting home to-night!"

The thunder growls a warning, The ghastly lightnings gleam, As the drover turns his horses, To swim the fatal stream. But, oh! the flood runs stronger Than e'er it ran before; The saddle horse is failing, And only half-way o'er!

When flashes next the lightning, The flood's grey breast is blank, And a cattle-dog and pack-horse Are struggling up the bank. But on the bank to northward, Or on the southern shore, The stock-horse and his rider Will struggle out no more.

The faithful dog a moment Sits panting on the bank, And then swims through the current To where his master sank. And round and round in circles, He fights with failing strength, Till borne down by the waters, The old dog sinks at length.

Across the flooded lowlands And slopes of sodden loam, The pack-horse struggles onward, To take dumb tidings home. And mud-stained, wet, and weary, Through ranges dark goes he; The hobble-chains and tinware Are sounding eerily.

* * * * *

The floods are in the ocean, The stream is clear again, And now a verdant carpet Is stretched across the plain. But someone's eyes are saddened, And someone's heart still bleeds, In sorrow for the drover Who sleeps among the reeds.

_THE RESCUE._

BY EDWARD DYSON.

(_From "Rhymes from the Mines," by kind permission of Messrs. Angus and Robertson, Publishers, Sydney and Melbourne._)

There's a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft, Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft; "Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a call-- Run, you fool! Number Two's gone to pieces, and Fred Baker is caught in the fall! Say, hello! there below--any hope, boys, any chances of saving his life?" "Heave away!" says the knocker. "They've started. God be praised, he's no youngsters or wife!"

Screams the whistle in fearful entreaty, and the wild echo raves on the spur, And the night, that was still as a sleeper in soft, charmed sleep, is astir With the fluttering of wings in the wattles, and the vague, frightened murmur of birds; With far cooeys that carry the warning, running feet, inarticulate words. From the black belt of bush come the miners, and they gather by Mack on the brace, Out of breath, barely clad, and half-wakened, with a question in every face.

"Who's below?" "Where's the fall?" "Didn't I tell you?-- Didn't I say them sets wasn't sound?" "Is it Fred? He was reckless was Baker; now he's seen his last shift underground." "And his mate? Where is Sandy M'Fadyn?" "Sandy's snoring at home on his bunk." "Not at work! Name of God! a foreboding?" "A foreboding be hanged! He is drunk!" "Take it steady there, lads!" the boss orders. He is white to the roots of his hair. "We may get him alive before daybreak if he's close to the face and has air."

In the dim drive with ardour heroic two facemen are pegging away. Long and Coots in the rise heard her thunder, and they fled without word or delay Down the drive, and they rushed for the ladders, and they went up the shaft with a run, For they knew the weak spot in the workings, and they guessed there was graft to be done. Number Two was pitch dark, and they scrambled to the plat and they made for the face, But the roof had come down fifty yards in, and the reef was all over the place.

Fresher men from the surface replace them, and they're hauled up on top for a blow; When a life and death job is in doing there's room only for workers below. Bare-armed, and bare-chested, and brawny, with a grim, meaning set of the jaw, The relay hurries in to the rescue, caring not for the danger a straw; 'Tis not toil, but a battle, they're called to, and like Trojans the miners respond, For a dead man lies crushed 'neath the timbers, or a live man is choking beyond.

By the faint, yellow glow of the candles, where the dank drive is hot with their breath, On the verge of the Land of the Shadow, waging war breast to bosom with Death, How they struggle, these giants! and slowly, as the trucks rattle into the gloom, Inch by inch they advance to the conquest of a prison--or is it a tomb? And the workings re-echo a volley as the timbers are driven in place; Then a whisper is borne to the toilers: "Boys, his mother is there on the brace!"

Like veterans late into action, fierce with longing to hew and to hack, Riordan's shift rushes in to relieve them, and the toil-stricken men stagger back. "Stow the stuff, mates, wherever there's stowage! Run the man on the brace till he drops! There's no time to think on this billet! Bark the heels of the trucker who stops! Keep the props well in front, and be careful. He's in there, and alive, never fret." But the grey dawn is softening the ridges, and the word has not come to us yet.

Still the knocker rings out, and the engine shrieks and strains like a creature in pain As the cage rushes up to the surface and drops back into darkness again. By the capstan a woman is crouching. In her eyes neither hope nor despair; But a yearning that glowers like frenzy bids those who'd speak pity forbear. Like a figure in stone she is seated till the labour of rescue be done. For the father was killed in the Phoenix, and the son--Lord of pity! the son?

"Hello! there on top!" they are calling. "They are through! He is seen in the drive!" "They have got him--thank Heaven! they've got him, and oh, blessed be God, he's alive!" "Man on! heave away!" "Step aside, lads; let his mother be first when he lands." She was silent and strong in her anguish; now she babbles and weeps where she stands, And the stern men, grown gentle, support her at the mouth of the shaft, till at last With a rush the cage springs to the landing, and her son's arms encircle her fast.

_She has cursed the old mine for its murders, for the victims its drives have ensnared, Now she cries a great blessing upon it for the one precious life it has spared._

_SALTBUSH BILL._

BY A. B. PATERSON.

(_By permission of Messrs. Angus and Robertson, Publishers, Sydney and Melbourne._)

Now this is the law of the Overland, that all in the West obey, A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day; But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood. They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good; They camp, and they ravage the squatter's grass till never a blade remains, Then they drift away as the white clouds drift on the edge of the saltbush plains. From camp to camp and from run to run they battle it hand to hand, For a blade of grass and the right to pass on the track of the Overland.

For this is the law of the Great Stock Routes, 'tis written in white and black-- The man that goes with a travelling mob must keep to a half-mile track; And the drovers keep to a half-mile track on the runs where the grass is dead, But they spread their sheep on a well-grassed run till they go with a two-mile spread. So the squatters hurry the drovers on from dawn till the fall of night, And the squatters' dogs and the drovers' dogs get mixed in a deadly fight; Yet the squatters' men, though they hunt the mob, are willing the peace to keep, For the drovers learn how to use their hands when they go with the travelling sheep; But this is a tale of a Jackeroo that came from a foreign strand, And the fight that he fought with Saltbush Bill, the King of the Overland.

Now Saltbush Bill was a drover tough, as ever the country knew, He had fought his way on the Great Stock Routes from the sea to the Big Barcoo; He could tell when he came to a friendly run that gave him a chance to spread, And he knew where the hungry owners were that hurried his sheep ahead; He was drifting down in the Eighty drought with a mob that could scarcely creep (When the kangaroos by the thousands starve, it is rough on the travelling sheep), And he camped one night at the crossing-place on the edge of the Wilga run; "We must manage a feed for them here," he said, "or the half of the mob are done!" So he spread them out when they left the camp wherever they liked to go, Till he grew aware of a Jackeroo with a station-hand in tow,

And they set to work on the straggling sheep, and with many a stockwhip crack They forced them in where the grass was dead in the space of the half-mile track; So William prayed that the hand of fate might suddenly strike him blue But he'd get some grass for his starving sheep in the teeth of that Jackeroo. So he turned and he cursed the Jackeroo, he cursed him alive or dead, From the soles of his great unwieldy feet to the crown of his ugly head, With an extra curse on the moke he rode and the cur at his heels that ran, Till the Jackeroo from his horse got down and he went for the drover-man; With the station-hand for his picker-up, though the sheep ran loose the while, They battled it out on the saltbush plain in the regular prize-ring style.

Now, the new chum fought for his honour's sake and the pride of the English race, But the drover fought for his daily bread, with a smile on his bearded face; So he shifted ground and he sparred for wind and he made it a lengthy mill, And from time to time as his scouts came in they whispered to Saltbush Bill-- "We have spread the sheep with a two-mile spread, and the grass it is something grand, You must stick to him, Bill, for another round for the pride of the Overland." The new chum made it a rushing fight, though never a blow got home, Till the sun rode high in the cloudless sky and glared on the brick-red loam, Till the sheep drew in to the shelter-trees and settled them down to rest, Then the drover said he would fight no more, and he gave his opponent best.

So the new chum rode to the homestead straight and he told them a story grand Of the desperate fight that he fought that day with the King of the Overland. And the tale went home to the public schools of the pluck of the English swell, How the drover fought for his very life, but blood in the end must tell. But the travelling sheep and the Wilga sheep were boxed on the Old Man Plain. 'Twas a full week's work ere they drafted out and hunted them off again. With a week's good grass in their wretched hides, with a curse and a stockwhip crack They hunted them off on the road once more to starve on the half-mile track. And Saltbush Bill, on the Overland, will many a time recite How the best day's work that ever he did was the day that he lost the fight.

_DROUGHT AND DOCTRINE._

BY J. BRUNTON STEPHENS.

(_By kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. Angus and Robertson, Sydney and Melbourne._)

Come, take the tenner, doctor ... yes, I know the bill says "five," But it ain't as if you'd merely kep' our little 'un alive; Man, you saved the mother's reason when you saved that baby's life, An' it's thanks to _you_ I ha'n't a ravin' idiot for a wife.

Let me tell you all the story, an' if then you think it strange, That I'd like to fee ye extry--why, I'll take the bloomin' change. If yer bill had said a hundred ... I'm a poor man, doc., and yet I'd 'a' slaved till I had squared it; ay, an' still been in yer debt.

Well, you see, the wife's got notions on a heap o' things that ain't To be handled by a man as don't pretend to be a saint; So I minds "the cultivation," smokes my pipe an' makes no stir, An' religion an' such p'ints I lays entirely on to her.

No, she's got it fixed within her that, if children die afore They've been sprinkled by the parson, they've no show for evermore; An' though they're spared the pitchfork, the brimstun, an' the smoke, They ain't allowed to mix _up there_ with other little folk.

So when our last began to pine, an' lost his pretty smile, An' not a parson to be had within a hunder mile-- (For though there is a chapel down at Bluegrass Creek, you know, The clargy's there on dooty only thrice a year or so)--

Well, when our yet unchristen'd mite grew limp, an' thin, an' pale, It would 'a' cut you to the heart to hear the mother wail About her "unregenerate babe," an' how, if it should go, 'Twould have no chance with them as had their registers to show.

Then awful quiet she grew, an' hadn't spoken for a week, When in came brother Bill one day with news from Bluegrass Creek. "I seen," says he, "a notice on the chapel railin' tied; They'll have service there this evenin'--can the youngster stand the ride?

For we can't have parson here, if it be true, as I've heard say, There's a dyin' man as wants him more'n twenty mile away; So"--He hadn't time to finish ere the child was out of bed, With a shawl about its body an' a hood upon its head.

"Saddle up," the missus said. I did her biddin' like a bird. Perhaps I thought it foolish, but I never said a word; For though I have a vote in what the kids eat, drink, or wear, Their sperritual requirements are entirely _her_ affair.

We started on our two hours' ride beneath a burnin' sun, With Aunt Sal and Bill for sureties to renounce the Evil One; An' a bottle in Sal's basket that was labelled "Fine Old Tom" Held the water that regeneration was to follow from.

For Bluegrass Creek was dry, as Bill that very day had found, An' not a sup o' water to be had for miles around; So, to make salvation sartin for the babby's little soul, We had filled a dead marine, sir, at the fam'ly waterhole. Which every forty rods or so Sal raised it to her head, An' took a snifter, "just enough to wet her lips," she said; Whereby it came to pass that when we reached the chapel door, There was only what would serve the job, an' deuce a dribble more.

The service had begun--we didn't like to carry in A vessel with so evident a carritur for gin; So we left it in the porch, an', havin' done our level best, Went an' owned to bein' "mis'rable offenders" with the rest.

An' nigh upon the finish, when the parson had been told That a lamb was waitin' there to be admitted to the fold, Rememberin' the needful, I gets up an' quietly slips To the porch to see--a swagsman--with our bottle at his lips!