CHAPTER XXXI.
HOW TOM TROUBRIDGE KEPT WATCH FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Human affairs are subject to such an infinite variety of changes and complications, that any attempt to lay down particular rules for individual action, under peculiar circumstances, must prove a failure.
Hence I consider proverbs, generally speaking, to be a failure, only used by weak-minded men, who have no opinion of their own.

Thus, if you have a chance of selling your station at fifteen shillings, and buying in, close to a new gold-field on the same terms, where fat sheep are going to the butcher at from eighteen shillings to a pound, butter, eggs, and garden produce at famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and renders you uncertain and miserable by saying that "rolling stone gathers no moss;" as if you wanted moss! Again, having worked harder than the Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie in bed till eleven o'clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half-past seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep out an hour or so of the heat, and informs you that the "early bird gets the worms." I had a partner, who bought in after Jim Stockbridge was killed, who was always flying this early bird, when he couldn't sleep for musquitoes.

I have got rid of him now; but for the two years he was with me, the dearest wish of my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua could have had a quiet two minutes with that early bird before any one was up to separate them.

I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as "the late early bird" after that.

In short, I consider proverbs as the refuge of weak minds.
The infinite sagacity of the above remarks cannot be questioned; their application may.