Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/264

 persistency (as I thought), now it could do me no good; never left off (more or less) for five years. The which, in plenteousness of pasture and high prices for wool and stock, were the most fortunate seasons for squatters since the 'fifties,' with their accompanying goldfields prosperity. The last station having been sold, there was no chance of repairing hard fortune by pastoral investment. 'Finis Poloniæ.' During my temporary sojourn in Sydney I fell across a friend to whom in other days I had rendered a service. He suggested that I might turn to profitable use a facile pen and some gift of observation. My friend, who had filled various parts in the drama of life, some of them not undistinguished, was now a professional journalist. He introduced me to his chief, the late Mr. Samuel Bennett, proprietor of the Sydney Town and Country Journal. That gentleman, whom I remember gratefully for his kind and sensible advice, gave me a commission for certain sketches of bush life—a series of which appeared from time to time. For him I wrote my first tale, The Fencing of Wanderoona, succeeding which, The Squatter's Dream, and others, since published in England, appeared in the weekly paper referred to.

Thus launched upon the 'wide, the fresh, the ever free' ocean of fiction, I continued to make voyages and excursions thereon—mostly profitable, as it turned out. A varied colonial experience, the area of which became enlarged when I was appointed a police magistrate and goldfields commissioner in 1871, supplied types and incidents. This position I held for nearly twenty-five years.

Although I had, particularly in the early days of my gold-fields duties, a sufficiency of hard and anxious work, entailing serious responsibility, I never relinquished the habit of daily writing and story-weaving. That I did not on that account neglect my duties I can fearlessly aver. The constant official journeying, riding and driving, over a wide district, agreed with my open-air habitudes. The method of composition which I employed, though regular, was not fatiguing, and suited a somewhat desultory turn of mind. I arranged for a serial tale by sending the first two or three chapters to the editor, and mentioning that it would last a twelvemonth, more or less. If accepted, the matter was settled. I had but to post the weekly packet, and my mind was at ease. I was