And hard-cases chuckled, and hard-cases said
That Baby and Alice conveyed him to bed—
In subsequent storms it was painful to see
Those hard-cases side with the sinful J.P.
Next day, in the court, when the case came in sight,
O’Hara declared he was satisfied quite;
The case was dismissed—it was destined to be
The final ukase of O’Hara, J.P.
The law and religion came down on him first—
The Christian was hard but his wife was the worst!
Half ruined and half driven crazy was he—
It made an old man of O’Hara, J.P.
Now, young men who come from the bush, do you hear?
Who know not the power of barmaids and beer—
Don’t see for yourself! from temptation steer free,
Remember the fall of O’Hara, J.P.
BILL AND JIM FALL OUT
Bill and Jim are mates no longer—they would scorn the name of mate—
Those two bushmen hate each other with a soul-consuming hate;
Yet erstwhile they were as brothers should be (tho’ they never will):
Ne’er were mates to one another half so true as Jim and Bill.
Bill was one of those who have to argue every day or die—
Though, of course, he swore ’twas Jim who always itched to argufy.
They would, on most abstract subjects, contradict each other flat
And at times in lurid language—they were mates in spite of that.
Bill believed the Bible story re the origin of him—
He was sober, he was steady, he was orthodox; while Jim,
Who, we grieve to state, was always getting into drunken scrapes,
Held that man degenerated from degenerated apes.
Bill was British to the backbone, he was loyal through and through;
Jim declared that Blucher’s Prussians won the fight at Waterloo,
And he hoped the coloured races would in time wipe out the white—
And it rather strained their mateship, but it didn’t burst it quite.