for?" snapped the stranger, who had refreshed considerably. "I've
got nothing to thank Australia for--except getting out of it. It's
the best country to get out of that I was ever in."

"Oh, well, I only thought you might have had some friends over
there," interposed the traveller in an injured tone.

"Friends! That's another reason. I wouldn't go back there for all
the friends and relations since Adam. I had more than quite enough of
it while I was there. The worst and hardest years of my life were
spent in Australia. I might have starved there, and did do it half my
time. I worked harder and got less in my own country in five years
than I ever did in any other in fifteen"--he was getting mixed--"and
I've been in a few since then. No, Australia is the worst country
that ever the Lord had the sense to forget. I mean to stick to the
country that stuck to me, when I was starved out of my own dear native
land--and that country is the United States of America. What's
Australia? A big, thirsty, hungry wilderness, with one or two cities
for the convenience of foreign speculators, and a few collections of
humpies, called towns--also for the convenience of foreign
speculators; and populated mostly by mongrel sheep, and partly by
fools, who live like European slaves in the towns, and like dingoes in
the bush--who drivel about 'democracy,' and yet haven't any more spunk
than to graft for a few Cockney dudes that razzle-dazzle most of the
time in Paris. Why, the Australians haven't even got the grit to
claim enough of their own money to throw a few dams across their
watercourses, and so make some of the interior fit to live in.
America's bad enough, but it was never so small as that....Bah! The
curse of Australia is sheep, and the Australian war cry is Baa!"