The Peerybingle Papers.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 19, 23 March 1870, Page 3

The Peerybingle Papers.

From the writings of John Peerybingle, in the Melbourne Weekly Times , we take the following : It’s a beautiful sight to see a few people loving one another in tins wicked world like the parsons do. They don’t delight to bark and bite, like us common folks. When they have a row, it’s all for love, bless you. When they quarrel, it’s only because they’re sorry for one another, and want to mortify their pride. When they sneer, they intend it as a pious lark ; and when they get uncommon hasty, they mean it to be pleasant, if we properly understood ’em—for we all know how they love one another. I can’; help saying, when I read in the papers how they go on at their meetings—l can’t help saying, as the comic American said, “ Why these, weeps V or rather, if I may make so bold, “ What’s the meaning of this pious corrobboree, where one loving brother knocks another loving brother on the head with a Low Church waddy; and where another amiteth yet another with a High Church boomerang 1” They tell me that when a young blackfellow goes courting a black sweetheart, and when the old man father-in-law that is to be asks if his intentions ar'o strictly honorable, he answers the question in the poetical manner of his countrymen, by chevying her round the gum trees, and knocking the blushing young gin down with his waddy (thereby cracking her crown), instead of sending her a valentine with the portrait of a bullock’s heart in the centre

ot it, stuck through with soldiers’ bayonets. That’s their way of saying, “ Sweetness, I love you—be good enough to let us love one another.” It must be the same with the parsons. Or perhaps I ought to put it differently, and say with the parsons and their pot elders and admirers. The other day at the General Assembly one of these pets from Ballarat knocked his parson down with the Low Church waddy aforesaid, and tried to make out that he was rather “ Romish.” Then the parson shied a High Church boomerang at his head, and ha knocked under, with the observation that “ he’d been carried away by the excitement of the moment, and had uttered more than ho meant.” This excitable utterer of more than he meant was a Mr Wallaston. 1 wonder how many of these prize members of Church Assemblies, and able-bodied Christians, get excited and utter more than they mean ! if I was to utter more than I mean on the rank, some other carrier, as sure as a gun, would make it his business to try and punch ray head, so as to keep my tongue in better order. Such is life !