Page 283 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER I. A LABOURER

IN THE VINEYARD.

Society in Hobart Town, in this year of grace 1838, is, my
‘dear lord, composed of very curious elements.’ So ran a
passage in the sparkling letter which the Rev. Mr. Meekin,
newly-appointed chaplain, and seven-days’ resident in Van
Diemen’s Land, was carrying to the post office, for the delec-
tation of his patron in England. As the reverend gentleman
tripped daintily down the summer street that lay between
the blue river and the purple mountain, he cast his mild eyes
hither and thither upon human nature, and the sentence he
had just penned recurred to him with pleasurable apposite-
ness. Elbowed by well-dressed officers of garrison, bowing
sweetly to well-dressed ladies, shrinking from ill-dressed,
ill-odoured ticket-of-leave men, or hastening across a street
to avoid being run down by the hand-carts that, driven by
little gangs of grey-clothed convicts, rattled and jangled at
him unexpectedly from behind corners, he certainly felt
that the society through which he moved was composed
of curious elements. Now passed, with haughty nose in the
air, a newly-imported government official, relaxing for an
instant his rigidity of demeanour to smile languidly at the
chaplain whom Governor Sir John Franklin delighted to
honour; now swaggered, with coarse defiance of gentility

For the Term of His Natural Life