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 ET- ij •^ â-  1 -xi ' â- ; I Â¥1 til 1 (I .i 5? -W Kh «y ?•? A Boflumce of tbe Bash. I was on 801 Government duty last year in New Soutn Wala^ ttait took me into Ae local Post Offices. ' la the back parior, at the liandaroo Fost Offioa, I had a long ch*t with the son of the Postmistress a fine yoi:ng fellow, perhaps a litde over thirty. He was manager to a local sheep king, and rejoiced in the curious Christian name of Her. The following is his account of the circumstances that Jed to his being so named: I was there certainly but I don't remem- ber much about it. I was told. I can vouch for the truth of it, for she and hiaa, too, often and often have told it to me, and others. They've told it apart, each by their two selves, and they often tell it together â€" she telling about him, making him out to have been the hero, and he telling it all so that she was the heroâ€" heroine, I should say. But I expect each of 'em always told it in about tfie same words. You see it was an epoch like, and sort of fixed itself in their memoriesâ€" and what happened after, fixed it Mrmer yet. I've been manager on this station, up be- hind here, eight years and I was " boy " l-.ere [pointing with his pipe stem to the floor] eight years at school here in Gun- darco till I was fourteen so I suppose it must have been thirty-four years ago^near enough. The colony wasn't settled near so much as it is now. The coach from Sydney didn't reach Gandaroo not by three days' ride, and the mails was carried on horseback, once a week, the rest of the way. After the coach road, for a bitâ€" say twenty milesâ€" the track was good -enough, and there were stations further than that but by the end of the first day's ride, you reached the last house or hut you were to see till you sighted Gun- daroo. The first night the mail carrier put up at " Paddy's Shanty," a sort of an inn on the track. The next morning he startedâ€" all alone, mind you, with valuable mail bags â€" across as nasty a piece of bush as you'll find in Australia, and I suppose that says in the world. It was all ti tree scrub. If you know what that is you'll understand. Never see any Oh, well, its scrub, that is all little trees, with their leaves all on the top. All of 'em alike. Just too slender and weak to bear a man's climbing up one to look round too far apart for you to swarm up two at once, arms and legs, you know and yet too close for you to see sun or stars, night or day. That sort of scrub is the crudest of all. If you know' your ^vay, well and good but if you once get wrong. Lord help you You're bushed, as sure as you're alis'e. Unless you chance on a track, or come across a camp, you may lie down and give it up. As long as your water liarr'i holds out â€" so'U you. After that, you may give yourself a day or two to die in perhaps another two days, if you're a tough sort. Your bones 'II be there years after." Well, that's what he had to ride through for hours and hours, the second day and at night he ought to be about through it, if he kep' the track, and made out ti reach the open again. Then the track was across a fern gully, with a creek at the bottom and there he camped for the nighr. Then he had an eighty-mile ride the next day, straight through the Blue-gum forest in Gundaroo. The chap that rode with the mails then was a splendid fellow. Standard his name WAS. Too heavj' p'raps for a postman, as we understand 'em, but just the man for that work in those days. It wanted a fel- low full of pluck, as strong as a horse, and with all his wits about him. Besides the dangers of the track, and creeks to ford, and the heat, and the snakes at night, there was the loneliness. That one fellow, all alone in that great wild district, riding through the hours in the perfect stillness under the sky. No chance of seeing a soul, and probably not wanting to neither, as things was then. If any one did just happen tn come across the mail carriers in those days, it wasn't generally for no good. He used to say " When a man's got her Majesty's precious mail bags, with her own red seals on 'cm, in front of the saddle, and only the usual number of hands for pistols, m«d. •Ithongh ho wa. called Emperor, for it. Then -i«^£^«i^";Snhe1iSJ She ^uld hli^e gone the whole way alone. «•»« J'*?' ' '"f *^_.'^ddie £ on ^er if need be, he sail she was so tmstworthy. seemed all V^^t n ^^iST^d most Well, he nsed to tell it how he rode "-1 "1»« "^k down exhaosted, ana mow. though that Saturday in the ti-tree scmb, thinking of the p«ty on in front, in wbosW tracks he was galloping. It was jost near the end of the scr«b» he noticed, where they l^t^ and started on a scarcely visi- ble track to 'the- station away to the left, fifty miles or so. He nsed to say he must have ridden a couple of hours, perhaps, when he saw something on the track like a dead person or horse. He had his hand on his pistol as he trotted np to it, he said, thinking of the mails, whan he saw it wasn't a horse, or a man, but a tall slip of a young woman, dead, or perhaps only dying, laid on the ground with her back propped against a tree, and a poor little babyclinging to her breast. " Lord of all " muttered Standard, as he and she sank down have been in a sort of sleep or swoon, mixea, till Standard found her. She says to Standard " They must be tilled," and cries awfully. "Poor feUowB," said Standard. xx««Ky. r-" "t'^lo^ bread, aiidhiahis owa: that being "killed' woula be pleasant to f »» \bt_«l'»PPf ,°^L„7?X her she' hot seMon hereabout) together for a fire, and as soon as it bums up puts the biUy over it. Then he hunted in hiakit for a tan of milk he'd gotâ€" not to put into his tea, but to use for butter He thought it would be just A« tMng fMf the woman, see- ing Ae'd to ni whole pannikJB would oe jusstiw luuuc iwrfcMo „w-.â€" --- J • t â€" â€" J ""s, in fiL^ ine Bhe'd to nurse the chUd. .She had a, M^dle, wd that she mnsttak. â-  wIe vannifciB fuU of m»ai mflk^-^d hi* to the office, and not let anv • dying of thirst, as they most likely would do once they got lost there. But he tried He knew a power of gpod and then ke d ^«rj*«^ eat a bit of Bopped bread, aiid had his owj; tea. he gave her a towel and told her she* feel better for washing her face and handii and she and the baby shontmg all they' could mcst of the time, and they not come back it weren't likely they were withm^haU j now He made her understand this at last._ Says he, "Very likely they's got to camp, to comfort her, you understand. Then he started to say how was they and the baby to get out of this? She didn't want to move jump^offL^y's'l.rck'and^stood o"ver the f^om^^ere «he TT • P^T, J^^^^V '|t^!^^ woman He rwsed her as tenderly ahnost her husband should cOme back, but btand- rr;.ouTd %:?« done her own chk The ard a.ys toher ^^Snrhere^rif you little one, he used to say, started crying-a band no good by «t^P^°S j^^J^' "'^^^ T" kind of wail-and opened its eyes in that get «l«f ^^ *° '^°^*!?°' y°" " Sde? sort of way that yoiknow it hadn't long to send out a search party, and besides, 8Lp^dT5iag.Vt just woke np, and began ma'am_, your litrte one can't manage another again where it had left off. I've two kinds night in the bush. «,,,„„„ „p„ti- of my own nbw, and I know-not that "No, Sir," she says. She- was a gently, they've ever had to lie alongside a mother docile thmg, and see he was right; and then as good as dead and try to get fed and and reins, and all, he don't care much if he don't tee no one all the ride through." Ho wasn't one to boast, wasn't Standard but he had once to defend the mails, with three to o'.io against him, and tried for man- slaughterrtoo, for the way he done it, and acquitted, and carried out of the court on the chaps' shoulders. They tell that tale still here in Gundaroo. The time I'm telling you of was in the hoi season. The ground w^as all cracked and dry. There hadn't been a drop of rain for months and months, and lots of the creeks were empty. At Gundaroo it had been very bad, and the district round was terrible in want of water. On the "Siturday after New Year's day, when Standard left "Paddy's Shanty," it was a hot wind, awful to ride in. They thought rain was coming, though. The V.OjS of the shanty told Stamdard, as he fixed np his water barr'l behind him on the saddle, that a storekeeper and his wife and child, and his chum, had started the day before for a station where they'd got a berth. They had to follow the Gundaroo track a bit, and then strike across the bush to the station. " It isn't far they've to go," he said, but th're new chums, and the woman looked a bit delicate, as well as having a young baby to carry." " They've only two horses then," says Standard, looking along the track, " unless the third horse flew." "No," says the boss; "the woman rode behind one of the men, turn and tnm about. A fine young woman she was, too. " " It's to be hoped the chaps hadn't much else to carry, then," says Standard. "I couldn't carry another couple of pounds â€" let alone a woman and baby â€" on 'Lady,' without kno3king her up." " Well, you ain't got to," says the boss and langhs as he watches Standard put â- *'Lady" into a steady cantor along the trai'c. where the two sets of hoof marKs showed in the sand. "Lady" was a fine black mare. Very swift, bat just a thought too light for Standard and the bags, some said. He wouldn't allow it. He sud "She reach- es Gundaroo as fresh as need be on Monday mght^ and by the time she h*B to start on Thursday, she's wild to be on the road." He only traveled once a fortnight on her. The other week he road a roan, a buger brute, l:nc not half so aeaaible and kiuDUce as " Lady." She was a bon lady^-Staad- ard used to say. Her niothw was ** Duch- whereas thiB Toao was the son of If ilk- warmed at a breast as cold as that poor soul's. Thank God, no But for all that, well fed kids can cry, and cry pitiful, too so I know how he meant to say this particu- lar kid cried. Standard hadn't no need to tether Lady to make her stop alongside, she was such a reasonable beast but he put her bridle over a tree branch, for all that. Certainty is worth a dead of faith, when it's about being, left alone in a ti-tree scrub, without your horse and kit. Then he laid the little one on its mother's shawl and set to work to bring the mother too. He'd seen men exhausted, and laid down to die from thirst and fatigue come round, but he wasn't sure, he said, if a woman had to be done for the same as a man â€" he was a single chap then. But he set to and got a little water first, and then water with a. dash of bdmdy in it, between her blue lips, and rubbed her forehead and hands well, and laid her so as the blood â€" once the spirit had started it again â€" could flow a bit quicker to her brain. A bushman has to be a bit of a doctor, you know. Then the baby started to help by givring a loud shriek, and the young woman opened her eyes and sighed like and he kep' on giving her water and spirit as she could take it till she could feel herself more comfortable. He didn't start talking to her then, knowing she want- ed all her strength to come round but he put the baby tock in her arms, and the mother in her prompted her like to take a good long pull at the dnnk in the billy â€" so as ;he kid might get some in a while, you know. After a bit she started to cry in a low sort of way, and then Standard, he set by her and cheered her up, and told her not to take on. He told her she was found and that all the worst of being lost was done with, and not to cry and so on. All the time, poor fellow, though he didn't hurry her, he knew he was loosing time dreadfully and would hardly make the creek to camp by before nightfall. Thinking of that he suddenly remembered the woman had got to go too, or be left to die where she was. Standard Wbs wondering what the deuce he would do with her, when she started and told him how she came there. It seemed she was the wife of the storekeeper. Banner- man, that the boss "Paddy's Shanty" had spoken of, and she says, when they had got part way through the scrub (two days before mind you,) they stopped to change her on to the other horse, and allow 'em to stand about a bit to streteh their legs, the two men. The fools never hitched t^e horses to anything All on a sudden a snake slid across the track, right under the woman's feet. She screamed out, and that startled the horses. Off they went â€" bolted clean into the scrub, carrying every blessed thing they got with them â€" water, matehes, the billy and everything. Her husband and his chum tore after them, telling her to be sure and stop where she was. Sb^e sat there all alone, and there she'd set First, wait- ing patient, and then a little frightened and nervous as the time went on. Then, when it got dark and into the night, and they didn't come back and she tells how she stood there, not daring to move, but trying' to see over the trees, and shouting till she couldn't speak, and they never come. By and by' she got thirsty and faint, and the child was crying for drink and she'd nothinjg though feelmg bad at letting. baby go alone all that way y were bushrangers to be feu»?m was afraid to .«y much aboutSl the mails for fear of frichte^^l just said, there they wm i^1«V| she says to him, helpless and jirateful like " Could we ride behind you. Sir " Poor Standard He felt stumped. He didn't know what to say. He looked at the tall young woman and the baby, and then at himself and the horse'already well weight- ed with his camping kit and the mails. It wasn't possible and he knew it. There was ten miles or so, to be done that night, before they got to the creek. It was late now, nearly seven. If would be dark as pitch in the scrub before they got there, even if " Lady" could carry all that load so far as that but as to carrying them all to Gundaroo, eighty miles further onâ€" he knew she couldn't do it. Besides, nothing was allowed to delay the mails. He woulrt be late as it was, for the stop he's made. It must be a couple of days, at best, before he'd get there, carrying all that extra weight. So Standard stood for a moment or two and thought it all over, while he watched the girl (for she was no more) straighten herself and the child and struggle to stand. Seeing her stagger a bit called him to mni- self, and he thinks as he gave her lis hand to steady her, " Hang her Majesty's mail regulations I'll take her somehow " Bo he gets his blanket out of his kit and straps it behind the saddle, and then he took and laid the baby on the tree root, while he swung the woman on the blanket behind the saddle. Then he handed her up the child and got carefully into the saddle himself, leaving them all the room he could, she used to say. " Lady " looked round a bit doubtful of the extra weight and the dangling petticoats on one side, but started right enough when Standard told her it had got to be done. There wasn't much said on the ride. It was rough stepping, and " Lady" 'd to pick her way, and Standard had to help her and steady the poor lass behind with the baby in her right arm and her left hand on his belt and she was looking and looking on both sides to sec if she could see the two men. Except to beg Standard to stop a minute and shout once or twice in case her husband and his chum were near, she never spoke. Standard knew it must be hopeless, and the further they got the more hopeless it must get; but he was a tender-hearted fellow, and he couldn't stand hearing the poor soul crying in a hopeless sort of way behind him, and not do something to please her. But all the way the baby lay there as peaceful and comfortable as we are now this minute. When they got to the creek it was nearly dark and the woman was swaying in the saddle, though she'd sat straight enough at first. Noticini? this. Standard says, sudden- ly " Missus, have you ever rode alone?" She gives a sort of start, and sits up and says: "Oh, yes, I've rode a great deal when I was a girl but I'm that tired now and so weak that I can't sit np." She thought he was wondering at '• er leaning against him so heavy. But that wasn't what Standard was thinking. He knew himself what it was to sway, nearly to fall- ing straight out of the saddle, from fatigue and want of food and water. No, he was thinking of a plan for the next day. When they got to the creek he sat the woman down, and hobbles " Lady," and gives her mouth a sponge out and a bit of a rub, to last till he could see to her when she was cool. Then he got some sticks and dry grass (no fear of the wood being wet in a elass-he carried where she could see 'em and take them if she liked. He was always a bit of a dandy. But he didn't say nothmg to her about the comb and glass, l^cause, being a bachelor, of course he felt delicate about suggesting as her hair was hanging all down her back in two long, fair plaits. Standard used to say it was prettiest so, to his mind, but he thought sheM feel vexed if she knew he noticed it. So he just put the bit of glass handy and took himself off. When he came back, he says, he found the baby asleep, and smoothed and tidied some- how, and the woman as neat as a pin- women are so clever at straightening them- selves â€" and the pannikin and that washed up, and the fiie raked together. The woman sat there with her needlel)ook on her knee- she had it in a pocket, she says â€" sewing up a tear in her frock, where it had caught in one of the saddle buckles. Standard didn't say nothing much that night, but he had made up his mind, and after making a shel- ter of branches and fern and seen the mother and baby laid down under it one siile of the fire he stretched himself on the other side, with his head on the mail bags, and thought out what he'd decided to do. The woman and child must get to Gundaroo, and before the next night, too so must the mails. " Lady" could carr* them well enough, but she couldn't carry him as well. Very well then he'd stay behind and walk. " Lady" would go along the track through the forest alone, he knew, and if only the girl would have the pluck to trust herself to the mare and just sit still and hold the reins they'd all get to Gundaroo saie as a church. She gould then deliver up the bags. at the Post Office and tell them to send out a search party to' look after her husband and his chum and a horse to meet him. He knew he was sure to get into trouble with the authorities for risking it, especial- ly if it failed; and he knew, too, that it was no fun to be left to walk throught the forest in riding boote and breeches and with noth- ing but a few biscuito and a pistol. The water barr'l he meant to fill and fix in its place behind the saddle, and the rest of the tin of milk and the bread (damper, of courte, you know), and the tinned meat. Women needed a deal of feeding, especially when they'd a baby to feed, too, he thought. And she must take one of the pistols. His chief fear was she'd be. too soft-heart- ed to like to leave him behind, and yet he knew it couldn't be done under a couple of days, or more likely four if they tried to go altogether. Though he said, "Hang her Majesty's mails I" he daren't delay 'em so long, for all that. "Hanging" wouldn't hurt 'em, or him either but delaying 'em would be the very devil for them, and him, too! As soon as it was light he set to work sep- arating the things he was going to keep from those he was going to send on with the " Royal She-mail," as he called her in joke to himself. He looked at the two sleeping the other side of the fire under the open sky. The kid was comfortable enough, cradled in soft arms but the mother was lying just about as uncomfortably as it is possible to lie, so as to shelter the child. Standard, who noticed everything, made a note of this, and thought he'd work on her maternal feelings most to get her to go on in the morning. After he'd fed "Lady," about five o'clock, he groomed her up in style, for, he used to say, he must have the horse that carried the "Royal "She-mail" as smart as possible. L^ter on, when he saw the woman after her night's rest m the fresh early morning and had got her to eat a bit of breakfast he was quite pleased to see how much better she looked. He'd a great work, he said, to make her go without him, though she wasn't a bit afraid for herself. He had to say he shouldn't be so far behind, and swear he could walk pretty nearly as fast as " Lady" 'd go, and so on. He showed her how to fire the pistol, and told her to let " Lady " choose the way if she felt doubtful about the track among the gum trees. Of course, he cheered her up all he could, people of the office touch thei!" told her about sending the tw»l^. •%b meet mm and her husband ^1 he saw her sittinsr so easily and the baby lying in her Ian 'ZS ^li^^ spirit rose .animl roore toMj by her shawl, and her right annf pistol, if need be. his spirit rose !• looked able to do it. He wantai" her his mail badge, but he ^M wouldn't have it. She'd be saff ^l He didn't quite see what she a when it was all over but there it 1 you the story that way you'll koo lI ended too soon. " Well, there ain't much all. Mother, she rode track into Gundaroo. Ah ' Tgej ,. you now Yes, it was my moCf was and I m the baby ' She said why she wouldn't ^Ji badge was for the same reasod as b?J her shawl over the mail bags as soon 1 was out of Standards sight. Kq 1 thought, would thiuk a wouun andJ worth robbing. "I She left hiiu just at the beginn'tnj •] forest, lie says he walked by the h ' bit to see how she carried her, and let her start off at a gentle canter. 1 to say he never felt so dead lonely «j the brave young creature turned roJl waved her hand and says. " Gbod-bTfl God bless you for saving his life "-iij me in her armsâ€" and then was hid frojl in the trees. " Well, to cut a long story short, and me rode into Gundaroo at 9 o'd two and a half hours after time. place turns out to see who it was. A»J riding along with a baby They wg, so took up with the young womaj mother was a very personable young^o, they never noticed she was on "Lii though there must have been lots u^ Standard's mare well enough. Mother was dea^ tired agd I v^ J as comfortable as I am no'A by ttiafiu.] She rides straight up to the PostC and one of the chaps lifts her down anil wouldn't let one on. 'em touch the mailli but drags them ofi' herself, and says,! ing on the doorstep with me in her i and the mails at her feet; "If yont gentlemen, I've brought in the mMls. gentleman lent me his horse. I vat ij and will you send a horse to meet him. 1 walking from the fern gully. And ' is to be seen to, please." And theij drops down on the steps pretty Tellii done. The chaps set to and cheered her- after cheer, till mother was drawn in osl the noise by the Postmaster's wife, told'em they ought to know better thanii a lady so shamed-faced, so tired as s too. The old lady was quite as astoiiil as any of thetri, for all she said to thecl^ to hold their noise, and quite proud tok the first hearing of it all from mother, ts^ put her and me to bed in her ownn Well, the end of it was, S^^andard hei met right enough and brought in then afternoon. But they never found nijy father and his chum â€" not tiU months a and then it was bones they found. Motb she staid on and helped the PostmistreEl (rundaroo, who was getting oldish. So that's how a woman brought her ' jesty's mails into Gundaroo, and that's i I'm called Het. Don't see why ' Oh I forgot to saytl when I was christened, a month or so a' mother called me after Standard, as 1 saved us both. Didn't I tell you his was Hector â€" jHet, for short. Het Standi he WBks â€" I'm Het Bannerman but moti she is Mrs. Het Standard now, PostmistJ of Gundaroo. I dessay you guessed asD ;ana food! eon •r'O VtTWflK, 9PO«T. ViaUor fiom lOit^- (v^ Juu been muring game aU Oe ikintkigj Diagutud ffMtK^ "^Tia VAvmt'^at} M oow IS tBM kbxs vauti asd tax owkik OOQFLB OF DOOa." -mj^if^: i •• Did vf • HH ASTnaisa that ma f, :t^ m sciEirnnc and useful. An excellent bi-ass lacquer consists of e ounces shellac, two ounces sandarac, ounces annotto, quarter-ounce dragoil blood resin, one gallon spirits of wine, article to be lacquered should be heaifj slightly, and the laecjiier applied by nia of a soft cainel-hair biush. An ingenious process for giving aai'l surface to iron has recently bten devia Austria. The iron is first covered mercury, and silver is deposited upo"" surface electrolytically. The iron is ' ' heated to about 300° C. and the nierit; evaporates, leaving the layer of silver on t surface of the iron. Organ-pipes are made of equal I*'^j weight of tin and led, which melts at t hundred and seventy degrees rolled i The solder is made of one ard a ba!f i*l tin, one part lead by weigiit, which melKj three hundred and thirty four degrees. der with a copper bit and resin. Some* must be used and a little practice toa^^^ p!ish the soldering smoothly, so as not melt the pipe. If the solder should be lo^ not tractable enough, add half a part *â-  miith. .- Persons who are subjfct to asthnu shofl be extremely careful in their "v,'^» ride, bulky foods should be avoided, •»â-  not much liquid taken. Toast should j eaten rather than bread, and all raw or derdone vegetables and meats m"3t 'f fused. Stramonium in the form of ag*| ettes affords relief. Vegetable stiuiuWJI such as pepper, capsicum, and '"'^^*^' J cilitate digestion, and are teerefore help J asthma, but alcohol should be taken only on an emergency. holic stimulants whiskey-and-wattf brandy-and- water would be most '"•r^l A spreat point is to keep the body, a"" I pecially the feet, always warm. I Take ten fibres of the fiUing in "{.^1 and if on breaking they show a feaW^I dry, and lack-lustre condition, discolonwi «» fingers in handling, yon may at ^^1 sure of the presence of dye and »"rA,l weighting. Or take a small portion « I fibres between the thumb and '""^thj and roll them over and over very g^l and you will soon detect the gum, mw^l soap uid other ingredients of the "Vjj,! the abaence of them in the other. â- Â» ^1 but effective test of purity is to burn » j^,! qnaatky. of the fibres. I'ure silk ^J staotixcri^, leaving only a pure f^r^, heavitydyed ailk will smoulder, l*" yellow, greasy ash. If, on the cf°*7*i^y|H cannot break the ten strands, and tae; i fll a natatal lustre and brilliancy, as° tadiseairac the- fingers at the P^^^Ti^iil tact, you may be well assured that J^ I a pore dlk that is honest in its m^ daraUe in its ' Tra Whej day aft church- who su and p young 8uccee( back ii saries, as her a bad couple hnsbai tomar stand wife i to cat side. holds dnrio place assist part, in tl At attl ateT mn« othe Ila1 wat dow tiU chni The 'wai das wii PM V» aoc to dfa «n vi «f ir in ' ih in fa .- « « I i \t â- â- -1 €^« V