As for allowing that there could be any fault in our workmanship, that our inexperienced joinery can have been the cause of the shanty's premature decay, that, even Old Colonial says, is ridiculous. No, the wood was unseasoned; or, perhaps, it was over-seasoned. We admit so much, but our handicraft was certainly not to blame.
The imperfections of the shanty are many and grievous. The door and windows have quarrelled desperately with their settings. On windy nights we get no sleep, as every one is engaged trying to fasten and wedge them into noiseless security. The door developed a most obstreperous and noxious habit of being blown into the middle of the house during the night, with much hideous clatter and clamour. We stopped that at last by nailing it up altogether, and making a new entrance through the side of the chimney-place.
Then, each particular board in the sides of the shanty has somehow warped itself out of place. We are thus enabled to view the lovely scenery lying round the place from our bunks, without the trouble of rising and going to the window. Old Colonial says that free ventilation is one of the great blessings of life. He thinks that the chinks in our walls are absolutely a provision of Nature, since, he says, we would certainly be choked with smoke if there were none.
Sometimes the cattle, feeding on the clearings round the shanty, come and thrust their noses through the gaps in the boards, or stand and eye us as we are taking our meals. The Saint says he has invited them to breakfast with us, on the first of April next, by which time he expects that the chinks will have gaped wide enough to permit of the passage of cattle.
Of course, the smoke of the fire will not go up the chimney as it ought, but floats freely about the shanty. This is good for the bacon and hams, when there are any, that depend from the rafters. It is also a wholesome thing, says Old Colonial, and sweetens and preserves everything. "None of your gassy, sooty coal-smoke, but the fragrant vapours of the burning forest!" so he remarked one night, when we were all blinded and choked by the volumes of smoke that rolled through the shanty. O'Gaygun is often funny, but not always original. He says that the smoke floats about our habitation because it never knows which hole it ought to go out at!
On rainy nights—and that is nearly every night during some three months of the year—there is perpetual misery in the shanty. One hears some choice varieties of rhetorical flowers of speech; there is a continual shifting about of beds; and often unseemly scuffling for drier places. O'Gaygun says that he loves to "astthronomise" when lying comfortably in bed; but he adds, that, "a shower-bath is a quare place to sleep in."
It will be surmised from this that our roof is leaky. All roofs are that, you know, in a greater or lesser degree, only ours in a greater, perhaps. Those shingles will come off. We are sure we put them on properly and securely. The nails must have been some inferior rotten quality, doubtless. Loose shingles lie about all around the shanty. They come in useful as plates, as our crockery is generally short. In fact, O'Gaygun prefers them to the usual article, and always goes outside to pick up a plate for any stranger who may happen to drop in to lunch. To use his words, "They fall aff the shanty roof loike the laves aff the tthrees!"
Somehow or other all these things go unremedied. It would, of course, be an admission that our work had been unsatisfactory, if we were to earnestly set about repairing the shanty, and thereby formally allow that it required such renovation. No one will dare to initiate such a serious thing. Besides, it is no one man's particular business to begin the work of mending; while we are always busy, and have acquired such an amazing notion of the value of our time, that we consider the necessary repairs would not be worth the time it would take us to effect them.
Moreover, Old Colonial is a bush-philosopher, and delivers himself of moral orations in the shanty of nights. His views on some subjects are peculiar, and they are always hurled at our heads with the utmost scorn and contempt for all who may differ from them. This is his theory on repairing—
"We are pioneers; it is our special duty and purpose to make, to begin, to originate. We inherit nothing; we are ourselves the commencement of a future society, just as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. Our whole time and labour must be given to the one purpose of hewing out the new path. We cannot stop to repair our faults and failures. For us that would be a waste of energy and of time. It is for those who inherit the commencement we have made to do that; not for us, the pioneers. They will improve our beginnings; we must continue onward. Never mend anything, except your manners, boys! Put up with discomforts and hardships, as pioneers should!"