Thus, if you
have a chance of selling your station at fifteen shillings, and buying
in, close to a new gold-field on the same terms, where fat sheep are
going to the butcher at from eighteen shillings to a pound, butter,
eggs, and garden produce at famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and
renders you uncertain and miserable by saying that "rolling stone
gathers no moss;" as if you wanted moss! Again, having worked harder
than the Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie in bed
till eleven o'clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half-past
seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep out an hour
or so of the heat, and informs you that the "early bird gets the
worms." I had a partner, who bought in after Jim Stockbridge was
killed, who was always flying this early bird, when he couldn't sleep
for musquitoes. I have got rid of him now; but for the two years he was
with me, the dearest wish of my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua
could have had a quiet two minutes with that early bird before any one
was up to separate them. I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as
"the late early bird" after that.
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