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The nomadic digger who called no man master is a steady-going wage-earner now. Coal-mines and quartz-reefs are the mainstays of Westland. Company management, trade unions, conciliation cases, and laws against Sunday labour have succeeded the rough, free-and-easy days of glittering possibilities for everybody. Even the alluvial fields are now systematically worked by hydraulic sluicing companies.

"Then there is that particularly free-and-easy tone in every one about.

Hating to see so much waste, Edison tried to save all he could by eating it on the spot, but as a result "our family doctor had the time of his life with me in this connection." An absurd incident described by Edison throws a vivid light on the free-and-easy condition of early railroad travel and on the Southern extravagance of the time.

After a few preliminary observations, which, like a breathing canter before a race, serves to get your courage up, and settle you well in your seat, I opened my negotiation by some very broad and sweeping truisms about the misfortunes of a bachelor existence, the discomforts of his position, his want of home and happiness, the necessity for his one day thinking seriously about marriage; it being in a measure almost as inevitable a termination of the free-and-easy career of his single life as transportation for seven years is to that of a poacher.

He had two brothers, James and George, who had been desperadoes before they were adopted by the Delawares, and who eventually became fierce and relentless savages. Simon had been captured at the same time as his brothers, but he did not at once fall under the influence of the unsettled, free-and-easy life of the Indians.

Q . On these occasions I always took up my quarters, for the time, at the tavern of our worthy Yankee friend, Mr. S . As I drove up to the door, I generally found S walking about briskly on the boarded platform, or "stoop," in front of the house, welcoming his guests in his own peculiar free-and-easy style, looking after their horses, and seeing that his people were attentive to their duties.

The woman carried a basket of vegetables, the boy hugged a big pawpaw fruit which he held up proudly as his mother responded in her free-and-easy, rather sulky fashion to Lady Bridget's stiff nod. 'It's for the House, cried the child. 'Fo Wung said I was to bring it up. Lady Bridget made a wry face she did not like pawpaws.

Had Margaret been a fashionable woman, in a great city, she might have disappointed the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber. Nay, even according to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at Charlemont, she might have done the same thing, and incurred no additional scandal. It was, indeed, to the surprise of a great many, that she made her appearance.

"Were I your partner, Sandal," she always addressed her friends in this free-and-easy fashion, "I'd be losing money. What luck you have!" "I never do seem to win," lamented Lord George. "Whenever I think I've got a good hand, the thing pans out wrong." "Hay has got all the money," said the simpering admirer who answered to the name of Tempest. "He and you, Miss Qian, are the winners."

A New England chronicler records that 'those who were on the spot have frequently, in my hearing, laughed at the recital of their own irregularities and expressed their admiration when they reflected on the almost miraculous preservation of the army from destruction. Men off duty amused themselves with free-and-easy musketry, which would have been all very well if there had not been such a dearth of powder for the real thing.