The Race of Life

The Race of Life

by Guy Boothby
The Race of Life

The Race of Life

by Guy Boothby

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Overview

If any man had told me a year ago that I should start out to write a
book, I give you my word I should not have believed him. It would have
been the very last job I should have thought of undertaking. Somehow
I've never been much of a fist with the pen. The branding iron and
stockwhip have always been more in my line, and the saddle a much more
familiar seat than the author's chair. However, fate is always at hand
to arrange matters for us, whether we like it or not, and so it comes
about that I find myself at this present moment seated at my table--
pen in hand, with a small mountain of virgin foolscap in front of me,
waiting to be covered with my sprawling penmanship. What the story
will be like when I have finished it, and whether those who do me the
honour of reading it will find it worthy of their consideration, is
more than I can say. I have made up my mind to tell it, however, and
that being so, we'll "chance it," as we say in the Bush. Should it not
turn out to be to your taste, well, my advice to you is to put it down
at once and turn your attention to the work of somebody else who has
had greater experience in this line of business than your humble
servant. Give me a three-year old as green as grass, and I'll sit him
until the cows come home; let me have a long day's shearing, even when
the wool is damp or there's grass seed in the fleece; a hut to be
built, or a tank to be sunk, and it's all the same to me; but to sit
down in cold blood and try to describe your past life, with all its
good deeds (not very many of them in my case) and bad, successes and
failures, hopes and fears, requires more cleverness, I'm afraid, than
I possess. However, I'll imitate the old single-stick players in the
West of England, and toss my hat on the stage as a sign that, no
matter whether I'm successful or not, I intend doing my best, and I
can't say more than that. Here goes then.

To begin with, I must tell you who I am, and whence I hail. First and
foremost, my name is George Tregaskis--my father was also a George
Tregaskis, as, I believe, was his father before him. The old dad used
to say that we came of good Cornish stock, and I'm not quite sure that
I did not once hear him tell somebody that there was a title in the
family. But that did not interest me; for the reason, I suppose, that
I was too young to understand the meaning of such things. My father
was born in England, but my mother was Colonial, Ballarat being her
native place. As for me, their only child, I first saw the light of
day at a small station on the Murray River, which my father managed
for a gentleman who lived in Melbourne, and whom I regarded as the
greatest man in all the world, not even my own paternal parent
excepted. Fortunately he did not trouble us much with visits, but when
he did I trembled before him like a gum leaf in a storm. Even the fact
that on one occasion he gave me half-a-crown on his departure could
not altogether convince me that he was a creature of flesh and blood
like my own father or the hands upon the run. I can see him now, tall,
burly, and the possessor of an enormous beard that reached almost to
his waist. His face was broad and red and his voice deep and sonorous
as a bell. When he laughed he seemed to shake all over like a jelly;
taken all round, he was a jovial, good-natured man, and proved a good
friend to my mother and myself when my poor father was thrown from his
horse and killed while out mustering in our back country. How well I
remember that day! It seems to me as if I can even smell the hot
earth, and hear the chirrup of the cicadas in the gum trees by the
river bank. Then came the arrival of Dick Bennet, the overseer, with a
grave face, and as nervous as a plain turkey when you're after him on
foot. His horse was all in a lather and so played out that I doubt if
he could have travelled another couple of miles.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940013694118
Publisher: WDS Publishing
Publication date: 01/20/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 208 KB
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