whisky-bitten

Updated: July 15, 2025

So the whisky-bitten vaurien goes out to Melbourne, has an attack of delirium tremens aboard ship, finds his alcoholic allowance thenceforward stopped by the doctor's orders, swaggers his brief on the block in Collins Street, hangs about the bars, cursing the colonies and all men and all things colonial in a loud and masterful voice, to the great and natural contentment of the people of the country, pawns his belongings bit by bit, loafs in search of the eleemosynary half-crown or sixpence, and finally goes up country to be loathed and despised as a tenderfoot, and to swell the statistics of insanity and disease.

David Christie Murray - Recollections: With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of: Original Letters, of which one by George Meredith and: another by Robert Louis Stevenson are reproduced in: facsimile