On the Track
On the Track
The Songs They used to Sing; A Vision of Sandy Blight; Andy Page's Rival; The Iron-Bark Chip; ''Middleton's Peter''; The Mystery of Dave Regan; Mitchell on Matrimony; Mitchell on Women; No Place for a Woman; Mitchell's Jobs; Bill, the Ventriloquial Rooster; Bush Cats; Meeting Old Mates; Two Larrikins; Mr. Smellingscheck; ''A Rough Shed''; Payable Gold; An Oversight of Steelman's; How Steelman told his Story;
Book Excerpt
other,
that the bad girl was surreptitiously teaching her to sing "Madeline"
that day.
I remember a dreadful story of a digger who went and shot himself one night after hearing that bad girl sing. We thought then what a frightfully bad woman she must be. The incident terrified us; and thereafter we kept carefully and fearfully out of reach of her voice, lest we should go and do what the digger did.
. . . . .
I have a dreamy recollection of a circus on Gulgong in the roaring days, more than twenty years ago, and a woman (to my child-fancy a being from another world) standing in the middle of the ring, singing:
Out in the cold world -- out in the street -- Asking a penny from each one I meet; Cheerless I wander about all the day, Wearing my young life in sorrow away!
That last line haunted me for many years. I remember being frightened by women sobbing (and one or two great grown-up diggers also) that night in that circus.
"Father, Dear Father, Come Home wit
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