MOUNT IDA ELECTION.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 302, 11 December 1874, Page 3

MOUNT IDA ELECTION.

FBBB OPINIONB. (Specially reported for the ' Mount Ida Chronicle.') " 'There they sat; and, as I thought, expound' ing the law and the prophets, until, on drawing a little nearer, I found they A xoere only expatiating on the merits of a 7 candidate or two." I rely upon your secrecy, Mr. Editor. .If you tell who your reporter is, it is all -over with him—his occupation clean gone. He must to the Palmer, and insure for speedy transmigration by fever, a natives' spear, or famine. He would be clubbed if known as an individual, and not as only a reporting mytJ. By your ■constant entreaties, by your flattering expressions, ycu beguiled me. There was only one man, you said, who could hit off happily, truly, eloquently, artistically, and photograpnically, a reflective picture of electoral opinion. Of course the individual was me, though you did not say so. By such snares was I entrapped to do your dirty work: behold, then, the first fruits of my labor. On Monday last, I found myself at nine in the evening near an iron-roofed tent at the hack ot the town of Naseby. From a small pipe showing over one corner of a sod wing, issued occasional intermittent bursts of smoke. Through a small glass .over the canvass-lined door I could see the faint light of the fire within. Drawing near with caution, I crept round the ■corner of the sods, and steered (fortunately without noise) through a few iron pots, a bucket of water, a frying-pan containing grease and cold potatoes, and a kerosene tin full of ashes. Prom my position between the corner of the tent and the rough wall I could, through a crack, see inside the tent, and hear anything that might bo said. My position was not an enviable one. The night was miserably wet: I had cut one foot over an old glass bottle, I had only a partial protection from the sods under which I crouched for my head and arms, my pencil shook in ■my hand as I tried to hold it, and but for 'the mountain dew supplied by yourself, sir, or your imps [it is falso we are Good Templars], I must have relinquished my task. As it was, I dipped duly into the bottle, which process invigorated, if it did not cheer. Added to this was the risk of

detection, and a good cudgelling. Before •giving you a verbatim report of what was said, I ought perhaps to sketch the hut •—■*. .and its inmates—what I suppose, as a sensational writer, I should present as a tableau vivant —a Greek expression I don't quite understand, but which I always pretend to, as when my old shop mate Jones frequently used it. In London Jones had a sister who assisted in a young lady's seminary. Jones and I were both lea tasters. She came home of a Saturday night, and on Sunday, for delectation, did the Grecian bend, and * J other exquisitortions. It was Jones' habit to rapturously appeal to me to admire her tableau vivant, when in statu istic immobility she positioned herself. I mention this to let you see I understand and appreciate the artistic use of guch expressions. The hut was unfloored, a nail tin on three legs acted for stove, a billy full of black tea simmered on the top, provoked into a bubble by the occasional blazing up of a twig of brush-broom, or speargrass, pushed under it by one or other ol£ the three men who sat and louuged round the floor. One with squat * figure, but bushy black beard, and who t' was somewhat advanced in years, lay on a stretcher, the head of which acted as a main support for the stove pipe, an old sardine tin being fixed between the head of thy bed and the hot flue. A tall, slighter mado man of about forty sat, making beliovo to cut and pare a leather washer, on a gin-case with a small hinged lid —the case doing double duty as provision cupboard and scat. A small stool (the only other piece of furniture in the plaee, except a scored deal table about 3ft. by 2ft., and a clock) completid the furniture, and was occupied by the remaining figure, which appeared to be that of a man hardly 1 - otit of ; ..bis : . youth, yet bronzed and muscular as his companions, though conveying an air of quickness and grace entirely foreign to them. AH were 'amoking in silence, there being no sound but that caused by the gambols of a kitten and young puppy in one corner, and the gnawinga of a hungry or restless rat from urtder an old packsaddle encumbered with Htraps and musty flour bags which lay in another. The sole accompaniment was the patter and drip upon and from the small red iron roof, and an occasional song from the billy. After I had - watched a little, the younger man (who fidgetted rather than sat) pulled off one boot almost unconsciously, which was appropriated by the kitten and pup—turned Again to feed the fire, forgetting the other, until irritated with the silence and the constant gnaw-gnaw from the corner, he hastily plucked it ofF, and hurled it with an oath at the saddle. The man on the stretcher drew himself up on his elbow saying, "Hang it, Jim! don't curse the brute—it don't feel it any." " No, I don't suppose it does; but we're all so confoundedly quiet—l must t do something." " True for you, my boy! I thought you

Wi'i-o liu'iiiny, in your mind that last evening at with that young " " A truce en your tales, you old humbug ! And what were you ruminating ? and Bill there, too, looking streakifc as a death's head. Why, I declare he has drawn slower and slower at that old black Cutty of his he tells such lies about till it has gone out, and he don't know it •orae devilment, I take it."

" Yes I do, youngster; but I don't mind telling you. I was sort of overhauling this here election, and I can't quite get-the thing settled to my mind. Now there's old Armstrong, who came slobbering round the claim, we were working on the other side, last election, and said what was true—that there was not a bit of harm in him, nor good either, for that matter."

" Hang it, Bill! don't drop too heavy on to John. He is as goodnatured as the day, and would'nt hurt anybody if he know it."—(This from the stretcher.) " But, Tom, he don't know it, and hurts them. Oh, yes, good natured ! —a capital character he would have made for Dickens, Bulwer Lytton, or Thackary, any of whom would have made him original—fixing his phiz somewhere in the imagination gallery as a sort of immortal residuum, or mixture of Mrs. Nickleby, Eugene Aram, and Dobbin. I know all that, but just toll me what we owe old John ? I say nothing. Vogel gave the Goldfields a sop ; and, thanks to growling, Pyke, and Robinson, Otago got her share—no thanks to old Sludge for that. Honest, too, I suppose you'll say." " Yes, certainly." " 'Taint my idea of honesty. Truckles to old Moran, I hear. I suppose t'other Otago Bishop will start a Masonic Episcopalian Exclusion Card. Any way, Moran's crowd seem to intend to declare John down our throats, whether we like itj or not. Why, man, in his address don't he say he will resign to a local man P Catch him at it! They won't let him. He always does what he's told. He cannot be honest, even, without a license."

" Well, Bill, quiet as "you look, you do let out at times. I don't care a rush for John—the whole thing is a humbugging farce. The whole parcel of them that come touting round aren't no better than they ought to be, or they would not go on the Wallabi away from their own roosts. John has not brains enough to do what he had'nt ouglit, and I expect the screw is more to him than to the rest; eh, youngster, what do you think?" "I-*I don't Jbelieve in Bullcalf's, or Mouldy's either: ' Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man P Care I for the limb, the thewes, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man?' No, none of your Bullcalf for me, though he roar ever so lustily before pricked." " Then you'll go for Leary," grunted the gin case. " Not I. He is the respectabilities pet. I've dropt that. He's one of your eyeglass gentry —an eye for No. I—only he drops that too when he comes up among rough diggers, who don't appreciate hawhawism. A model duplex repeater, kept in tho 'Guardian' shop, where such articles are sorted, cleaned, and warranted to go to wind. Messrs. Turnbull and Co. are famous for the polish on their stock. An advertised article out for inspection, trot him round, show his paces. One, .... ..."

" Hold on there, you sarcastic young devil, don't be unfair to the man. He had a right to run in harness for Caversham if he chose, or "for Mount Ida either, if he likes. He spends his own money, and wastes his own time, and don't do us a pen'orth of harm." " Preach away, Tom, I don't care. Take my word for it, if he gets in, Turnbull resigns the Treasurer's office, and puts in the child of independence—broken to harness, wavra " " Good for you, youngster! Why don'tyou go in for it yourself P " " 'Cause you 'aint got the sense to give me a chance. You would vote for anything or body before a true man—even the prophet's donkey, it he brayed musically. lam going to vote for Ewing. [Oaths from two quarters.] Swear away, you'll think as Ido before the poll. Hang it all, he need not have gone and shot at the beggar. He's paid for that, though, heavily enough : and, sentiment and Exeter Hall apart, there wasn't much in it. I know well in the old country every man had a great loaded horse-pistol in his reach, and it was warm work for the inquisitive one who popped his nose in at night after a plated or silver fork. Now, why should uot a man protect his gold (to get which he has perhaps run heavily into debt, and labored for months for) as well as a placed forkP My old uncle would have shot a man in a minute near the house at night if he could; but He could'nt —for, knowing the old man's touchiness about the trigger, I always drew the bullets."

" "Well, there is a good deal in that," said Bill, "such practical interest in money bags as takes defending suggests in itsell protective measures for the Goldfields, which, so far from coming into the pateoftheoutsidcreprescntativo, take years to knock even an idea of into him. I am not sure there's not some conceit to be rubbed out of this fellow Ewing. I see ho believes in leasing lands instead of selling them. Now, if you think it over, you will find that these superficial clever ones that prate about the state lands and so on aro, in nino cases out of ten, either spiritualists, freethinkers, freelovers f or something of the kind children of liberty. Eh, man ! what if your friend Bui!calf was a • pupil of Mrs. Victoria Woodhull. He has been bellowing about his ancestors, g-g-gg.g.g. . . ~ and his American experiences." ■•■•." All right! there s old Tom there pretending its all humbug, and so on, when I'd stake a barrel of beer to an eggshell he'll be the keenest of the lot on the 21st, though he won't put John in. I take it Ewing has done more by his work at St. Bathans than any other miner in the place. He ha 3 put on the best plant money couldbuy, and has shownitpays; he has trained and employed a heap of men; he is not only what is called a practical miner—which means, often enough, one who has succeeded in nothing—but he is one. If, after all he has done to keep St. Bathans afloat as a place of permanent and solvent mining, St. JBathanites go bloating after foreign cattle, they deserve to be grazed." " I 'aint sure but what you're right said, Tom," (Sis eyes twinkled as the young fellow spoke up) "you do generally lead us old 'tins as you like. He used, though, to look a sort of shadowy, half-starved goat." " There's brains in you two yet; no thanks to you for that," replied Jim. " I have no love for any of the crowd. They 'aint, one of them, my kidney, If Ewing is good enough to represent all the Otago

miners, he's good enough for the respectable twaddling shop in Dunedin. I don't care for him one rush, it? just a choice, and I say, ' Give me this same half-faced fellow, Shadow —give me this man; . . . . The foeman may, with a> great aim, level at the edge of a penknife : .... Ogive mo the spare men, and spare me the great ones.' Politics be hanged, I'll to bed. ' GHve me the spirit, Master Shallow.''-'