Men From the Bush

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 10, 13 January 1936, Page 10

Men From the Bush

THEY DANCE; BUT NO WILD

TIMES,

SYDNEY, December 24,

From out of the West came Bill, with a fat cheque in his pocket and a determination to take Sydney apart and see how it worked. Two weeks later Bill went back to the West. It had been a great fortnight even if a week of it had ben spent in gaol. Bill was satisfied. Anyway, he had given that “copper” a lovely black eye.

But that happened years ago. We pass now to young Bill. He also is fcoundMor Sydney from the West, with a fat cheque in his pocket. But is he going to spend it in roystering? Not young Bill; he intends to take dancing lessons.

That's the way it is nowadays. The young men from the bush are danceminded. The professor, who gives dancing lessons, and ought to know, said so to-day. He is busy just now, teaching the latest steps to tho young men, who have come down from the bush for their holidays. He explained that if a young man in the bush can't dance, he just isn't in the picture. The girls aren't rude to him; worse than that, they are coldly polite. They will have a dance with him, but only on sufferance. A threepenny bit, he is made to feel, is large compared with him. And so the young Bills, smarting with humiliation, save their money, and bide their time.

Soon they will bo going down to Sydney for a holiday, and when they get back . . . Well, maybe Elsie will be sorry, then, for tho way she behaved.

“Once eight cane-cutters from Queensland came in to be taught” said the professor. "I thought it was a reginieut. They didn’t know a twostep from a barn dance, but before I had finished with them they went to a dance in Sydney.” Tho constables on lonely patrols in the Northern Territory—they, top, as they sit by the camp-fire at night, think of the time when they will be in Sydney on leave, and will be able to brush dp their dancing. The professor mentioned two who had been through his hands.

And there was the dairy- farmer from

the South Coast, who turned out to be a genius of the dance, winning important competitions in Sydney. Romanticists may sigh for the old roystcring days, when men were men. But the professor doesn’t. He’s doing very well, thank you.