MILES FRANKLIN,

AUSTRALIA.

This tale’s as true as true can be,
For what is truth or lies?

So often much that’s told by me
When seen through other eyes,

Becomes thereby unlike so much
These others tell to you,

And if things be the same as such,
What is a scribe to do?

Why, tell his tale of course, my friend,
Or hold his tongue for aye,

Or wait till fictive matters mend,
Which may be by-and-bye.

So here’s a tale of things a-near
That you may read and lend

Without a fear—you’ll need no tear—
It hasn’t any end.

CHAPTER ONE.

EXPLANATORY.

A wallaby would have done just as well as a human being to endure the nothingness of existence as it has been known to me. This, I suppose, is why I want to tell of the only two lively things that have happened in a dull, uninteresting life. You don’t know me from a basket of gooseberries, or wouldn’t if only I had kept myself to myself, but as I didn’t, I shall endure the embarrassment of bringing myself to your attention again in an explanatory postscript. In company with ninety-nine percent, of my fellows, the subject of self is full of fascination to me. There are cogent reasons for this.

One of the interesting happenings is my entanglement with Henry Beauchamp. The other is my experience in writing a new style of autobiography. Such a departure grew out of my satiation with the orthodox style. I shall deal with the autobiography first. These notes are slightly and somewhat expurgatedly compiled from my diary.

I was at that stage of chrysalism when boys dream of becoming bushrangers, engine drivers, or champion pugilists. Nothing so garishly simple relieves a girl. I yearned to make the whole world into a beautiful place where there would be no sick and starving babies, where people of advancing years could be safe from penury, where all the animals could be fat and happy, and even our little sisters, the flowers, might not be bruised or plucked against their wish. The prospect of settling down to act tame hen in a tin pot circle, and to acknowledge men as superior merely owing to the accident of gender, revolted me.

Life among boys and girls at an institution such as the Stringybark Hill Public School, ere adolescence has arrived to mess things up, is a good example of democracy. There were no wealthy within competitive reach, money did not count to any extent, and beauty and birth did not count at all. We never heard of such things. Only the merit of brains and honesty weighed in the school room, and athletic prowess coupled with fair play on the playground.

Any sort of lessons except long addition sums were a joy and sinecure to me. On the playground, though small, I was fleet of foot and exceptionally agile, could vault as high as any boy of my own age till I was twelve, and was always chosen as captain whether the game happened to be cricket, rounders or prisoners’ bar. A balance was preserved in my status by the fact that the dunces at lessons were always the best bats or runners outside, and that athletes when grown up had so much more glory than mere scholars.