but was not there also some small trifle of insolence, ingratitude, and above all bungality, on the part of this Abner?  When the distance had become too great to see the whole of a transaction, why strain the eyes looking at a part?  Finally Jacky submitted that these microscopic researches cost a good deal of trouble, and on the whole his tribe were wiser than the white fellows in this, that they reveled in the present, and looked on the past as a period that never had been, and the future as one that never would be.  On this George resigned the moral culture of his friend.  “Soil is not altogether bad,” said Agricola, “but, bless your heart, it isn’t a quarter of an inch deep.”

On George’s departure, Jacky, being under the temporary impression of his words, collected together a mixed company of blacks, and marched them to his possessions.  Arrived, he harangued them on the cleverness of the white fellows, and invited them to play at Europeans.

“Behold this ingenious structure,” said he, in Australian; “this is called a house; its use is to protect us from the weather at night; all you have to do is to notice which way the wind blows, and go and lie down on the opposite side of the house and there you are.  Then again, when you are cold, you will find a number of wooden articles in the house.  You go in, you bring them out and burn them and are warm.”  He then produced what he had always considered the chef d’oeuvre of the white races, a box of lucifer matches; this, too, was a present from George.  “See what clever fellows they are,” said he, “they carry about fire, which is fire or not fire at the fortunate possessor’s will;” and he let off a lucifer.  These the tribe admired, but doubted whether all those little sticks had the same marvelous property and would become fire in the hour of need; Jacky sneered at their incredulity, and let them all off one by one in a series of preliminary experiments; this impaired their future usefulness.  In short, they settled there; one or two’s heads had to be broken for killing the breeders for dinner, and that practice stopped; but the pot-bellied youngsters generally celebrated the birth of a lamb by spearing it.  They slept on the lee side of the house, warmed at night by the chairs and tables, etc., which they lighted.  They got on very nicely, only one fine morning, without the slightest warning, whir-r-r-r they all went off to the woods, Jacky and all, and never returned.  The remaining bullocks strayed devious, and the douce McLaughlan blandly absorbed the sheep.

Hasty and imperfect as my sketch of this Jacky is, give it a place in your notebook of sketches, for in a few years the Australian savage will breathe only in these pages, and the Saxon plow will erase his very grave, his milmeridien.

brutus lived; but the form and strength he had abused were gone—­he is the shape of a note of interrogation, and by a coincidence is now an “asker,” i.e., he begs, receives alms, and sets on a gang of burglars, with whom he is in league, to rob the good Christians that show him pity.