Short Stories. Kyrle Bellew

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      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066442866

Table of Contents

       MAINLY ABOUT MYSELF.

       SOCKS

       A REAL GHOST

       POOR DEVIL

       DAGO

       One Christmas Day In Melbourne

       MINE HAUS

       How I Got On the Stage

       HEN AND CHICKEN

       How We Pegged Buchanan

       The Children's Graves

       GOD KNOWS

       THE BLACKBIRD

       A Brief Sketch of Mr. Bellew

      Dear Reader: There is a tradition amount Australians that three classes of story-tellers exist—Liars, D— —d liars, and Mining Experts.

      There are also three kinds of fools: Plain Fools, D— —d fools, and "New Chums."

      I have been a Mining Expert, and every kind of fool, including the New Chum. Now I have fairly warned you.

      If you care to read farther through these pages you will find both my confessions verified.

      Fiction is greater than fact—because, one has to invent fiction, and fact just happens without your being obliged to bother about it.

      "In medias tutissimus ibis." With this proverbial philosophy in my mind, I have steered the middle course between the two.

      There are many people in the corners of the Earth to which Fate has led me, should this volume ever fall into their hands, who will recognize the incidents herein set down and the occasions of their occurrance. They will probably content themselves with classing me somewhere in the category ending with "Mining Experts."

      Every reader I feel confident will put me down a fool, perhaps a D— —d fool or worse. It is my privilege to forestall all, and accept the situation, you see, as gracefully as I can, contenting myself with the satisfaction of a conscience cleared by the confession of my shortcomings.

      If it amuses you, dear reader, to say with the immortal Rosalind, "These are all lies"—Say it and be happy. If, on the other hand, it contents you to believe these sketches, "Mainly about Myself," are true,—you will do yourself "no harm" and me "no wrong."

      ​I pretend to no literary excellence or style. In these pages I talk to you in the language of men on the quarter-deck, in the reporter's room, 'round the camp-fire, in the bush, in the theatre and in everyday life.

      My i's are not dotted nor my t's crossed any more than they would be were I recounting these stories viva voca. Such niceties are the attributes of fiction rather than fact. But if I have helped in these pages, to lighten the dullness of even a minute of your time, I shall have done well, and so I leave you to go ahead and read my book, or not, just as you please.

      ​

MAINLY ABOUT MYSELF.

       Table of Contents

      My beloved mother told me I was born one Thursday morning early, unfashionably and uncomfortably early; on the 28th of March. The year of Grace of my advent, which I have no means to verify, has been put down in almanacs and newspaper records anywhere between 1845 and 1860. As my dear father did not happen to be married until 1848-49, and I was the youngest but one of a moderately numerous family, the former date suggests a situation which happily, no less an authority than Ulster King-at-arms contradicts; the latter date I know to be wrong—unhappily! My nurse, bless her heart, when to this day, I remember with the tenderest feelings of undying affection, always impressed upon me the legend that I was "found in a band-box under a cabbage." Dear, deceitful soul—rest in peace!

      So, you see, even in my earliest childhood, my mind was sorely puzzled to discriminate between fiction and fact. I must say, the picture I conjured of myself, wrapped in beautiful clean tissue-paper, tied up with a lovely pink ribbon, or possibly a blue one, reclining in a pure white band-box under the shade of a dew besprinkled cabbage, was intensely alluring.

      I never could settle in my mind why the cabbage was selected by "Willie," my nurse, and I ventured to question the genus of the plant that sheltered my discovery.

      ​But in spite of suggestions from me of "bulrushes," "rose bushes," and other more decorative plants, Miss Wilson stuck to the cabbage. Failing to shake her adherance to the succulent vegetable, I let it go at that. I never see a cabbage growing, however, even to-day, but the difference between us arises in my mind; and were "Willie" once more to revisit the earth, I feel, if we met, I should still try to induce her to reconsider the matter of the plant, under whose shade I was introduced to the world.

      The troublous times of the Indian Mutiny gave me my first impressions of life. Of these I have only vague recollections; and I am not sure to-day, whether those vivid pictures, that come back to me out of the mist of the past, are not the memories of my parents transmitted to me in early childhood.

      I know we were up in the hills of Chirapoongee, and came down to Calcutta, passing through many perils. In those days there were no railways, and I remember being borne along in a kind of chair, held by a broad band passed around the forehead of a stalwart native bearer. I remember days spent in a howdah on the back of an elephant. I recount many days and nights on board a pinnace; it was a green pinnace—green and white, floating along down the silent waters of a broad river. I can to-day see again large СКАЧАТЬ