A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

Every big town has its complement of hawkers. Melbourne had a plague of them, their raucous voices compelling notice day and night. To lovers of quiet and peace they were a nuisance; especially in those hours when there was a hush over all mundane things. The rattle of carts and the clutter of driven quadrupeds, combined with the musical tones of grumptious bipeds, struck one as an outrage on nature when they were raised under the soft light of peaceful stars. An old maxim impresses upon all sluggards that the early bird catches the worm; but it omits to add that birds have the grace to wait for daylight, and the worm which is thus caught owes its downfall to dilatory habits.

Another old-time adage instructs us that "early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." If all humanity acted upon that there would at least be a reasonable span of calm occurring regularly in every 24 hours. But the busy man goes to bed late and gets up early. In any case, the old adage is a fool. I tried it when I couldn't help it, and can speak from personal experience. In the bush we got up early to start on a journey. To begin with, horse hunting in the dark occupied ten times longer than would have sufficed in daylight, to say nothing of stubbing one's toes, falling over logs, stumbling into ruts and gullies, and damaging one's eyes against twigs and branches. You run the same risk in riding, besides the risk of losing the road, and every now and again you are smothered in the great yellow, viscous net of the forest spider. Once I fell in the river through getting up early, and I have suffered numerous inconveniences, besides losing much valuable time fiddling around, through being too previous. Certainly the habit made me wiser; it taught me the wisdom of staying in bed till the sun got up; but I am quite positive it never made me wealthy.