This advice did not sound very respectful; however, I overlooked it for the present, as it was not unlikely I might have the advantage of seeing him again in custody, and I sent to him across the road some hot tea, bread, butter, and beef.  This softened the heart and loosed the tongue of the old swagman.  It appeared from his account of himself that he was not much of a blacksmith.  He was ostensibly going about the colony looking for work, but as long as he could get food for nothing he did not want any work, and he always avoided a blacksmith’s shop; as soon as he found himself near one he ceased to be a blacksmith.

When asked about his former life, he said a gentleman had once advised him to write the particulars of it, and had promised him half-a-crown if he would do so.  He had written some of them, but had never seen the gentleman again, so he did not get the half-crown; and now he would take sixpence for the copyright of his work.  I gave him sixpence, and he drew out a manuscript from an inside pocket of his coat, and handed it to me.  It was composed of small sheets of whitey-brown wrapping paper sewn together.  He had ruled lines on it, and had written his biography with lead pencil.  On looking over it I observed that, although he was deficient in some of the inferior qualifications of a great historian, such as spelling, grammar, and a command of words of seven syllables, yet he had the true instincts of a faithful chronicler.  He had carefully recorded the names of all the eminent bad men he had met, of the constable who had first arrested him, of the magistrate who had committed him for trial, of the judge who had sentenced him, of the gaolers and warders who had kept him in prison, of the captain, doctor, and officers of the ship which conveyed him to Sydney, of the squatters who had forced him to work for them, and of the scourgers who had scourged him for not working enough.  The names of all these celebrated men, together with the wicked deeds for which they were admired, were given in detail, after the true historic method.  We all take a great interestin reading every particular relating to the lives of notorious tyrants and great sinners; we like to know what clothes they wore, and how they swore.  But the lives of great and good men and women are very uninteresting; some young ladies even, when travelling by train, prefer, as I observe, French novels inspired by Cloacina to the “Lives of the Saints.”

Some people in the colonies are said to have had no grandfathers; but John Smithers was even more deficient in pedigree, for he had neither father nor mother, as far as he could recollect.  He commenced life as a stable boy and general drudge in England, at a village inn owned and conducted by a widow named Cobbledick.  This widow had a daughter named Jemima.  The mischief wrought in this world by women, from Eve to Jemima downwards, is incalculable, and Smithers averred that it was this female, Jemima, who brought