Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/218

 192 see nothing outside to indicate their presence but a little brown streak of clay—the covered way by which they make their approaches; they never volunteer their appearance.

24th.—I have hired two Irish men to split palings, at 10s. a hundred (the paling is four feet six inches long, and from four to six inches broad); they commenced this morning, and have already cut a tree three feet six inches in diameter, cross cut one length, split it into convenient sizes by wedges, and are now splitting out the paling with a knife, as you may have seen laths split. The tree is of the red gum species, and splits well, each pale from half an inch to an inch thick. Experienced men sometimes split from 200 to 300 a day, so they can earn a good deal of money; but on the other hand they buy their provisions from their employers.

I have always considered my own countrymen peculiarly happy in hitting off and applying a metaphor, though its frequent confusion is, perhaps, the principal cause of the bulls so liberally attributed to them: an instance of the ready application of a very whimsical metaphor amused me this morning.

"Hah, my joker," exclaimed Paddy Burn, as he drove a wedge home with peculiar effect into a large block of the tree." "Are you making him laugh, Paddy?" said Jack Galway. "Laugh, is