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Updated: May 1, 2025
The dress was quite in keeping with the figure: in his hat, which was slightly peaked, was stuck a peacock's feather; over a waistcoat of hide, untanned and with the hair upon it, he wore a rough jerkin of russet hue; smallclothes of leather, which had probably once belonged to a soldier, but with which pipeclay did not seem to have come in contact for many a year, protected his lower man as far as the knee; his legs were cased in long stockings of blue worsted, and on his shoes he wore immense old-fashioned buckles.
The dress was quite in keeping with the figure: in his hat, which was slightly peaked, was stuck a peacock’s feather; over a waistcoat of hide, untanned and with the hair upon it, he wore a rough jerkin of russet hue; smallclothes of leather, which had probably once belonged to a soldier, but with which pipeclay did not seem to have come in contact for many a year, protected his lower man as far as the knee; his legs were cased in long stockings of blue worsted, and on his shoes he wore immense old-fashioned buckles.
They taught me as a cadet to groom my horse and pipeclay my uniform, to be respectful to my corporal, and to keep my thumb on the seam of my trousers when the captain's eye was on me; but as to what passed inside my mind, if I had a mind at all, or what I thought of Pope, Kaiser, or Cardinal, they no more cared to know it than the name of my sweetheart.
These words stuck in his memory, as words which bring a new light on an outlook will. That was the start of his demoralisation. He was the first of all his line who had been told to hide himself from death. No more the worsted bravery, the pipeclay, lace and scarlet. No more the old military swagger.
Unluckily, while at Poole he had made a great impression upon Sir John Webbe, a Roman Catholic baronet, who had large estates in the neighbourhood. Sir John had taken up a grand scheme for developing his property at Hamworthy, close to Poole. Stephen, it seems, had discovered that there were not only brick earth and pipeclay but mineral springs and coal under the barren soil.
Why, didn't they get him to talk to the French officers when we landed at Ceylon, and the French frigate was there? and my word, how he did jabber away! He might have been a real mounseer. Well, 'taint no business of mine; so long as he gets his accoutrements clean, and a good coating of pipeclay on his belts, that's enough for me.
The digging was in many places very shallow, and the soil was sometimes of a clayey description, sometimes very gravelly with slate bottom, sometimes gravelly with pipeclay bottom, sometimes quite sandy; in fact, the earth was of all sorts and depths. At one time there were eight thousand diggers together in Eagle Hawk Gully. This was some months before we visited it.
The wash-dirt was white gravel, intermixed with heavy boulders, on a soft pipeclay bottom; its thickness being from 2 to 3 feet. It averaged in some places 3 oz. to the load. Finally, a rush set in, and before three months had elapsed there were more than 15,000 miners on the ground.
It was, to be sure, whispered that some of the young gentlemen were fond of milk for their tea, and from that time forward not a drop was ever seen in their berth. Before that time, one or two of them used to boast that they had the art of manufacturing milk out of pipeclay, whereby they accounted for the rare fluid which occasionally appeared on the mess-table.
I'd agreed to go and play at a darnce at Old Pipeclay School-house all night that very night and leave her at home because she hadn't asked to come; and it never struck me to ask her at home by herself in that hole for twenty-five bob. And I only stopped at home because I'd got the hump, and knew they'd want me bad at the school."
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