Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke (24 April 1846 – 2 August 1881) was an Australian novelist and poet, best known for his novel For the Term of his Natural Life. ...summary from wikipedia .............................................................................. This volume was published in 1877 and contains four short stories. The Romance of Lively Creek La Beguine The Poor Artist King Billy's Breeches ............................................................................... Excerpts: THE ROMANCE OF LIVELY CREEK: Mademoiselle Pauline was a woman of an uncertain age--that is to say, she might have been two-and-twenty, and was not improbably three-and-thirty. Tall, elegant, self-possessed and intelligent, she made her business arrangements with consider- able acuteness, and having duly checked all items of "gas" and "etceteras", announed that she would play the "Green Bushes" as an initiatory performance. "I always act as my own agent," said she, "and my company is entirely under my own direction". ............................................................................. LA BEGUINE: "GOOD gracious!" said I, "what are you doing here?" She was a childlike little creature, having brown hair and brown eyes. She was dressed in black silk, and wore a white lace veil tied in a quaint coquettish way over her head. She looked up and recognised me. "Donnington's gone away," she said, simply, "and I don't know what to do." "Don't stay here, at all events. This is not the place to cry in. Come, let us walk down the street, and tell me all about it." I was a schoolboy of sixteen, Donnington was a man about town, she was one Fanny Robinson--called, from her fanciful method of dressing, La beguine--and the place was that huge building in Great Globe Square which, commencing as a Pantechnicon, budded into a Circus, and now the Escurial Palace.
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