FullReads

Now I often sit at Watty’s, when the night is very near,
With a head that’s full of jingles–and the fumes of bottled beer;
For I always have a fancy that, if I am over there
When the Army prays for Watty, I’m included in the prayer.
It would take a lot of praying, lots of thumping on the drum,
To prepare our sinful, straying, erring souls for Kingdom Come.
But I love my fellow-sinners! and I hope, upon the whole,
That the Army gets a hearing when it prays for Watty’s soul.
-When the World was Wide.

The Salvation Army does good business in some of the outback towns of the great pastoral wastes of Australia. There’s the thoughtless, careless generosity of the bushman, whose pockets don’t go far enough down his trousers (that’s what’s the matter with him), and who contributes to anything that comes along, without troubling to ask questions, like long Bob Brothers of Bourke, who, chancing to be “a Protestant by rights,” unwittingly subscribed towards the erection of a new Catholic church, and, being chaffed for his mistake, said:

“Ah, well, I don’t suppose it’ll matter a hang in the end, anyway it goes. I ain’t got nothink agenst the Roming Carflicks.”

There’s the shearer, fresh with his cheque from a cut-out shed, gloriously drunk and happy, in love with all the world, and ready to subscribe towards any creed and shout for all hands–including Old Nick if he happened to come along. There’s the shearer, half-drunk and inclined to be nasty, who has got the wrong end of all things with a tight grip, and who flings a shilling in the face of out-back conventionality (as he thinks) by chucking a bob into the Salvation Army ring. Then he glares round to see if he can catch anybody winking behind his back. There’s the cynical joker, a queer mixture, who contributes generously and tempts the reformed boozer afterwards. There’s the severe-faced old station-hand–in clean shirt and neckerchief and white moleskins–in for his annual or semi-annual spree, who contributes on principle, and then drinks religiously until his cheque is gone and the horrors are come. There’s the shearer, feeling mighty bad after a spree, and in danger of seeing things when he tries to go to sleep. He has dropped ten or twenty pounds over bar counters and at cards, and he now “chucks” a repentant shilling into the ring, with a very private and rather vague sort of feeling that something might come of it. There’s the stout, contented, good-natured publican, who tips the Army as if it were a barrel-organ. And there are others and other reasons–black sheep and ne’er-do-wells–and faint echoes of other times in Salvation Army tunes.

Bourke, the metropolis of the Great Scrubs, on the banks of the Darling River, about five hundred miles from Sydney, was suffering from a long drought when I was there in ninety-two; and the heat may or may not have been another cause contributing to the success, from a business point of view, of the Bourke garrison. There was much beer boozing–and, besides, it was vaguely understood (as most things are vaguely understood out there in the drought-haze) that the place the Army came to save us from was hotter than Bourke. We didn’t hanker to go to a hotter place than Bourke. But that year there was an extraordinary reason for the Army’s great financial success there.

She was a little girl, nineteen or twenty, I should judge, the prettiest girl I ever saw in the Army, and one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen out of it. She had the features of an angel, but her expression was wonderfully human, sweet and sympathetic. Her big grey eyes were sad with sympathy for sufferers and sinners, and her poke bonnet was full of bunchy, red-gold hair. Her first appearance was somewhat dramatic–perhaps the Army arranged it so.