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| I SUPPOSE it just depends on where you’re raised, | |
| Once I met a cove as swore by green belar! | |
| Couldn’t sight the good old mallee-stump I praised; | |
| Well!—I couldn’t sight belar, and there you are! | |
| But the faces in the fire where the mallee stump’s a-blinking | 5 |
| Are the friendliest I ever seen, to my way o’ thinking! | |
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| In the city where the fires is mostly coal— | |
| There! I can’t a-bear to go and warm my feet! | |
| Spitting, fizzing things as hasn’t got no soul! | |
| Things as puffs out yaller smoke instead of heat! | 10 |
| But at home—well, it is home when the mallee-stump’s a-burning, | |
| And the evenin’s drawing chilly and the season is a-turning. | |
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| And there’s some as runs ’em down because they’re tough. | |
| Well? And what’s the good of anythink as ain’t? | |
| No. It’s nary use to serve ’em any bluff, | 15 |
| For they’d use up all the patience of a saint. | |
| But they’ll split as sweet as sugar if you know the way to take ’em; | |
| If you don’t, there isn’t nothink in the world as’ll make ’em. | |
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| They’re tremenjus hard to kindle, tho’, at first: | |
| Like the friendship of the kind that comes to stay. | 20 |
| You can blow and blow and blow until you burst, | |
| And when they won’t, they won’t burn, anyway! | |
| But when once they gets a start, tho’ they make no showy flashes, | |
| Well, they’ll serve you true and honest to the last pinch of ashes. | |
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