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While the Billy Boils by Henry Lawson
page 74 of 337 (21%)
men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many
drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight
active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats,
Crimean shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots--
"larstins," they called them. They could dance well; sing
indifferently, and mostly through their noses, the old bush songs;
play the concertina horribly; and ride like--like--well, they
_could_ ride.

He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old
colonial school to which he belonged. They _had_ careless and
forgetful ways about them. His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and
he'd come to Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes. He had
a portmanteau, a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a
tin bog. I sat beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance,
and he told me all about it. First he asked me would I mind shifting
round to the other side, as he was rather deaf in that ear. He'd been
kicked by a horse, he said, and had been a little dull o' hearing on
that side ever since.

He was as good as blind. "I can see the people near me," he said,
"but I can't make out their faces. I can just make out the pavement
and the houses close at hand, and all the rest is a sort of white
blur." He looked up: "That ceiling is a kind of white, ain't it?
And this," tapping the wall and putting his nose close to it, "is a
sort of green, ain't it?" The ceiling might have been whiter. The
prevalent tints of the wall-paper had originally been blue and red,
but it was mostly green enough now--a damp, rotten green; but I was
ready to swear that the ceiling was snow and that the walls were as
green as grass if it would have made him feel more comfortable. His
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