Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374771" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Jonah’s Luck</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">OUT OF LUCK, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where’s the use complaining?<br>Take your fancy, I’m in funds now—I can stand the racket, Dan.<br>Dump your bluey in the corner; camp here for the night, it’s raining;<br>Bet your life I’m glad to see you—glad to see a Daylesford man.<br>Swell? Correct, Dan. Spot the get up; and I own this blooming shanty,<br>Me the fellows christened ‘Jonah’ at Jim Crow and Blanket Flat,<br>’Cause my luck was so infernal—you remember me and Canty?<br>Rough times, those—the very memory keeps a chap from getting fat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where’d I strike it? That’s a yarn. The fire’s a comfort—sit up nearer.<br>Hoist your heels, man; take it easy till Kate’s ready with the stew.<br>Yes, I’ll tell my little story; ’tain’t a long one, but it’s queerer<br>Than those lies that Tullock pitched us on The Flat in ’52.<br>Fancy Phil a parson now! He’s smug as grease, the Reverend Tullock.<br>Yes, he’s big—his wife and fam’ly are a high and mighty lot.<br>Didn’t I say his jaw would keep him when he tired of punching mullock?<br>Well, it has—he’s made his pile here. How d’you like your whisky—hot?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Luck! Well, now, I like your cheek, Dan. You had luck, there’s no denying.<br>I in thirty years had averaged just a wage of twenty bob—<br>Why, at Alma there I saw men making fortunes without trying,<br>While for days I lived on ’possums, and then had to take a job.<br>Bah! you talk about misfortune—my ill-luck was always thorough:<br>Gold once ran away before me if I chased it for a week.<br>I was starved at Tarrangower—lived on tick at Maryborough—<br>And I fell and broke my thigh-bone at the start of Fiery Creek.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At Avoca Canty left me. Jim, you know, was not a croaker,<br>But he jacked the whole arrangement—found we couldn’t make a do:<br>Said he loved me like a brother, but ’twas rough upon a joker<br>When he’d got to fight the devil, and find luck enough for two.<br>Jim was off. I didn’t blame him, seeing what he’d had to suffer<br>When Maginnis, just beside us, panned out fifty to the tub.<br>‘We had pegged out hours before him, and had struck another duffer,<br>And each store upon the lead, my lad, had laid us up for grub.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">After that I picked up Barlow, but we parted at Dunolly<br>When we’d struggled through at Alma, Adelaide Lead, and Ararat.<br>See, my luck was hard upon him; he contracted melancholy,<br>And he hung himself one morning in the shaft at Parrot Flat.<br>Ding it? No. Where gold was getting I was on the job, and early,—<br>Struck some tucker dirt at Armstrong’s, and just lived at Pleasant Creek,<br>Always grafting like a good ’un, never hopeless-like or surly,<br>Living partly on my earnings, Dan, but largely on my cheek.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Good old days, they like to call them—they were tough old days to many:<br>I was through them, and they left me still the choice to graft or beg—<br>Left me gray, and worn, and wrinkled, aged and stumped—without a penny—<br>With a chronic rheumatism and this darned old twisted leg.<br>Other work? That’s true—in plenty. But you know the real old stager<br>Who has followed up the diggings, how he hangs on to the pan,<br>How he hates to leave the pipeclay. Though you mention it I’ll wager<br>That you never worked on top until you couldn’t help it, Dan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Years went by. On many fields I worked, and often missed a meal, and<br>Then I found Victoria played out, and the yields were very slack,<br>So I took a turn up Northward, tried Tasmania and New Zealand,—<br>Dan, I worked my passage over, and I sneaked the journey back.<br>Times were worse. I made a cradle, and went fossicking old places;<br>But the Chows had been before me, and had scraped the country bare;<br>There was talk of splendid patches ’mongst the creeks and round the races,<br>But ’twas not my luck to strike them, and I think I lived on air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rough? That’s not the word. So help me, Dan, I hadn’t got a stiver<br>‘When I caved in one fine Sunday—found I couldn’t lift my head.<br>They removed me, and the doctor said I’d got rheumatic fever,<br>And for seven months I lingered in a ward upon a bed.<br>Came out crippled, feeling done-up, hopeless-like and very lonely,<br>And dead-beat right down to bed rock as I’d never felt before.<br>Bitter? Just! Those hopeful years of honest graft had left me only<br>This bent leg; and some asylum was the prospect I’d in store.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You’ll be knowing how I felt then—cleaned-out, lame, completely gravelled—<br>All the friends I’d known were scattered widely north, and east, and west:<br>There seemed nothing there for my sort, and no chances if I travelled;<br>No, my digging days were over, and I had to give it best.<br>Though ’twas hard, I tried to meet it like a man in digger fashion:<br>’Twasn’t good enough—I funked it; I was fairly on the shelf,<br>Cursed my bitter fortune daily, and was always in a passion<br>With the Lord, sir, and with everyone, but mostly with myself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was older twenty years then than I am this blessed minute,<br>But I got a job one morning, knapping rock at Ballarat;<br>Two-and-three for two-inch metal. You may say there’s nothing in it,<br>To the man who’s been through Eaglehawk and mined at Blanket Flat.<br>Wait—you’d better let me finish. We and ill, I bucked in gladly,<br>But to get the tools I needed I was forced to pawn my swag.<br>I’d no hope of golden patches, but I needed tucker badly,<br>And this job, I think, just saved me being lumbered on the vag.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fortune is a fickle party, but in spite of all her failings,<br>Don’t revile her, Dan, as I did, while you’ve still a little rope.<br>Well, the heap that I was put on was some heavy quartz and tailings,<br>That was carted from a local mine, I think the Band of Hope.<br>Take the lesson that is coming to your heart, old man, and hug it:<br>For I started on the heap with scarce a soul to call my own,<br>And in less than twenty minutes I’d raked out a bouncing nugget<br>Scaling close on ninety ounces, and just frosted round with stone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How is that for high, my hearty? Miracle! It was, by thunder!<br>After forty years of following the rushes up and down,<br>Getting old, and past all prospect, and about to knuckle under,<br>Struck it lucky knapping metal in the middle of a town!<br>Pass the bottle! Have another! Soon we’ll get the word from Kitty—<br>She’s a daisy cook, I tell you. Yes, the public business pays<br>But my pile was made beforehand—made it ‘broking’ in the city.<br>That’s the yarn I pitch the neighbours. Here’s to good old now-a-days.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Edward+George+Dyson">Edward George Dyson</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374771" data-title="Jonah’s Luck de Edward George Dyson" data-description="OUT OF LUCK, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where’s the use complaining?
Take your fancy, I’m in funds now—I can stand the racket, Dan.
Dump your bluey in the corner; camp here for the night, it’s raining;
Bet your life I’m glad to see yo..."></div>
</div>
</div>