A little boy spent his first day at school. “What did you learn?” was
his aunt’s question. “Didn’t learn nothing.” “Well, what did you do?”
“Didn’t do nothing. There was a woman wanting to know how to spell
‘cat,’ and I told her.”
An English School-boy’s Essay on Australia.
“Part of Austrailya is vague. It ust to be used by the English to
keep men on that was not bad enough to be killed. Some farms would
raise as much as five hundred thousand. The English long ago ust to
send their prisoners there when they did anything not worth hanging.
“Austrailya is a vast Country, and the biggest Island on the surface
of the Earth. It has all its bad men and they have found a great many
Gold and Diamonds there, and Sidney is one of the Chief Countries in
it which is in new south Wales.
“It used to be used for purposes of Exploration, but it has no
interior, and you can’t explore it. Sometimes it is called Antipides,
because everything is upside down there. The chief products are Wool
and Gold and other Exports and the Austrailyan eleven come from
there. The Climate is hot in the Summer and not so in the Winter,
which causes drowts and sweeps all the sheep away and the banks break.
“It was discovered by Captain Cook who captured it from the Dutch.
There are no wild Animals there except the Kangaroo, they fly
through the air with great skill and then they return again right to
your feet. The natives are coloured Black and they call themselves
Aboriginels, they subsist on bark and other food they do no work and
chop wood for a miserable living and can smell the ground like a
dog. When we go there they call us new Chums. They have no form of
Worship, and pray for rain, but a belief in Federashun because they
want to be joined together.
“Their only amusement is Co-robbery. It is celebrated for
Bushrangers and the Melbourne Cup which sticks people up and takes
from them all they have got.
“Austrailya has a lot of aliasses, one is new Holland and afterwards
it was called Pollynesia, and Van Demon and Oceana but sir Henry
Parks called it Austrailya on his Death-bed. You can go to it in a
ship but it is joined to Great Britain by a cable.”
129. I ran to a certain railway station to meet the train which was
due at 3.15 p.m. When I arrived on the platform the hands of the
clock made equal angles with 3 o’clock. How long had I to wait?
[Illustration]
130. The wall of China is 1500 miles long, 20 feet high, 15 feet wide
at the top and 25 at the bottom. The largest of the pyramids is said
to have been 741 feet at the base, 481 feet vertical when finished.
How many such pyramids could be built out of the wall of China?