The Workingmans Paradise | Page 2

Bones Become Men."
CHAPTER VII.
A Medley of Conversation.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Poet And The Pressman.
CHAPTER IX.
"This Is Socialism!"
CHAPTER X.
Where The Evil Really Lies.
CHAPTER XI.
"It Only Needs Enough Faith."
CHAPTER XII.
Love And Lust.

PART II. HE KNEW HIMSELF NAKED.

CHAPTER I.
The Slaughter Of An Innocent.
CHAPTER II.
On The Road To Queensland.
CHAPTER III.
A Woman's Whim.
CHAPTER IV.
The Why Of The Whim.
CHAPTER V.
As The Moon Waned.
CHAPTER VI.
Unemployed.
CHAPTER VII.
"The World Wants Masters."
CHAPTER VIII.
The Republican Kiss.
CHAPTER IX.
Ned Goes To His Fate.

"On the Flinders.
"In a western billabong, with a stretch of plain around, a dirty waterhole beside me, I sat and read the WORKER. Maxwellton Station was handy; and sick with a fever on me I crawled off my horse to the shed on a Sunday. They invited me to supper; I was too ill. One gave me medicine, another the WORKER, the cook gave me milk and soup. If this is Unionism, God bless it! This is the moleskin charity, not the squatter's dole. The manager gave me quinine, and this is a Union station. I read 'Nellie's Sister' (from THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE) in you last. A woman's tenderness pervades it. Its fiction is truth. Although my feelings are blunted by a bush life, I dropped a tear on that page of the WORKER."
--FROM A LETTER.


PART I.
THE WOMAN TEMPTED HIM.
* * * * *
Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, Marked cross from the womb and perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen The gods that constrain us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other; Give me place, even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, Our Lady of Pain.--SWINBURNE.

THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE
CHAPTER I.
WHY NELLIE SHOWS NED ROUND.
Nellie was waiting for Ned, not in the best of humours.
"I suppose he'll get drunk to celebrate it," she was saying, energetically drying the last cup with a corner of the damp cloth. "And I suppose she feels as though it's something to be very glad and proud about."
"Well, Nellie," answered the woman who had been rinsing the breakfast things, ignoring the first supposition. "One doesn't want them to come, but when they do come one can't help feeling glad."
"Glad!" said Nellie, scornfully.
"If Joe was in steady work, I wouldn't mind how often it was. It's when he loses his job and work so hard to get--" Here the speaker subsided in tears.
"It's no use worrying," comforted Nellie, kindly. "He'll get another job soon, I hope. He generally has pretty fair luck, you know."
"Yes, Joe has had pretty fair luck, so far. But nobody knows how long it'll last. There's my brother wasn't out of work for fifteen years, and now he hasn't done a stroke for twenty-three weeks come Tuesday. He's going out of his mind."
"He'll get used to it," answered Nellie, grimly.
"How you do talk, Nellie!" said the other. "To hear you sometimes one would think you hadn't any heart."
"I haven't any patience."
"That's true, my young gamecock!" exclaimed a somewhat discordant voice. Nellie looked round, brightening suddenly.
A large slatternly woman stood in the back doorway, a woman who might possibly have been a pretty girl once but whose passing charms had long been utterly sponged out. A perceptible growth of hair lent a somewhat repulsive appearance to a face which at best had a great deal of the virago in it. Yet there was, in spite of her furrowed skin and faded eyes and drab dress, an air of good-heartedness about her, made somewhat ferocious by the muscularity of the arms that fell akimbo upon her great hips, and by the strong teeth, white as those of a dog, that flashed suddenly from between her colourless lips when she laughed.
"That's true, my young gamecock!" she shouted, in a deep voice, strangely cracked. "And so you're at your old tricks again, are you? Talking sedition I'll be bound. I've half a mind to turn informer and have the law on you. The dear lamb!" she added, to the other woman.
"Good morning, Mrs. Macanany," said Nellie, laughing. "We haven't got yet so that we can't say what we like, here."
"I'm not so sure about that. Wait till you hear what I came to tell you, hearing from little Jimmy that you were at home and going to have a holiday with a young man from the country. We'll sherrivvery them if he takes her away from us, Mrs. Phillips, the only one that does sore eyes good to see in the whole blessed neighborhood! You needn't blush, my dear, for I had a young man myself once, though you wouldn't imagine it to look at me. And if I was a young man myself it's her"--pointing Nellie out to Mrs. Phillips--that I'd go sweethearting with and not with the empty headed chits that--"
"Look here, Mrs. Macanany!" interrupted Nellie. "You didn't come in to make fun of me."
"Making