"You ought to—I would if I were you."
"Those were good old times," I hazarded. "You remember the old bark school?"
He looked away across the siding, and was evidently getting uneasy. He shifted about and said: "Well, I must be going."
"I suppose you're pretty busy now?"
"My oath! So long!"
"Well, good-bye. We must have a yarn some day."
"My oath!"
He got away as quickly as he could....
The Australian bushman has, what is generally known as a "rat"; in fact, the lunacy of Australia is most alarming. "There seems little doubt that insanity is slowly but steadily increasing in the States," remarks Coghlan, on the Commonwealth. He is only working on the figures asylum returns show. If only the idiots of the backblocks were included, the mad rate per thousand in Australia—now in excess of that of England—would stagger humanity.