As the station hands were busy erecting buildings in
newly opened up country, the blacks sent an envoy to engage their
attention while others of the tribe cut off the iron bracing from the
paddock gates wherewith to make tomahawks. They succeeded in completely
despoiling one gate before they were disturbed.
LITERAL TRUTH
A black boy of more than ordinary intelligence, who had been sent to
fill a couple of tubs with water, sauntered back with a self-satisfied
air and said--"Me finish 'em!"
The master found that the boy, as a preliminary, had fitted one tub into
the other.
MAGIC THAT DID NOT WORK
Under the spell of the first sensations of Christianity, Lucy found and
took unauthorised possession of a gold cross. Retiring to a secluded
spot on the bank of the river, she hung the cross to a string round her
neck, imagining it to be a charm, by the magic of which she would become
a white girl. Twenty-four hours of patient expectancy passed without any
change in Lucy's complexion, so she lost faith in the golden symbol, and
bartered it to a Malay pieman for cakes. Then good Christian folks
charged her with the theft of the cross, and the pieman with receiving
it, knowing it to have been stolen.
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