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"Miss Smartdeuce, may I beg the honour of your hand for the next waltz? surely after a round or two you will relish your champagne."
"Yes," with a smothered "dear," was the sigh-drawn reply.
Who has the power to roar the command, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further," to the flood of tears from forlorn Smartdeuce, when her soft Waterloobolter bolted for the gold-fields of Australia Felix.
To be serious. How could any candid mind otherwise explain the honest boldness of eight out of nine members of the first Local Court, Ballaarat, who, one and all, I do not say dared, but I say called upon their fellow miners to come forward to a public meeting on the old spot, Bakery-hill. September, Saturday, 30th, 1855. Said members had already settled at that time 201 disputes, and given their judgment, involving some half a million sterling altogether, for all what they knew, and yet not one miner rose one finger against them, when they imperatively desired to know whether they had done their duty and still possessed the confidence of their fellow diggers! They (said members) are practical men, of our own adopted class, elected by ourselves from among ourselves, to sit as arbitrators of our disputes, and our representatives at the Local Court. "That's the key, for any future Brougham, for the history of the Local Courts on the gold-fields.
It has fallen to my lot, however, to put the Eureka Stockade on record; and, from the following "Joe"-chapter must begin any proper history of that disgracefully memorable event.
IX.
ABYSSUS. ABYSSUM INVOCAT.
"Joe, Joe!" No one in the world can properly understand and describe this shouting of "Joe," unless he were on this El Dorado of Ballaarat at the time.
It was a horrible day, plagued by the hot winds. A blast of the hurricane-winding through gravel pits whirled towards the Eureka this shouting of "Joe." It was the howl of a wolf for the shepherds, who bolted at once towards the bush: it was the yell of bull-dogs for the fossikers who floundered among the deep holes, and thus dodged the hounds: it was a scarecrow for the miners, who now scrambled down to the deep, and left a licensed mate or two at the windlass. By
