Jack Moses [book review, 20 April 1924]

[Editor: This review of Beyond the City Gates (by Jack Moses), was published in the “Of Making Many Books” section of The Sun (Sydney, NSW), 20 April 1924.]

Jack Moses

A breath of the bush is to be caught in the verses and sketches contained in Jack Moses’s book “Beyond the City Gates,” but if he had never penned another line in his life Moses would deserve immortality for this:—

“I’ve done my share of shearing sheep,
Of droving, and all that;
And bogged a bullock team as well
On a Murrumbidgee flat.
I’ve seen the bullock stretch and strain,
And blink his bleary eye,
And the dog sit on the tucker-box
Nine miles from Gundagai.”

There you have Jack Moses, unaffected, sincere; not a great literary genius, but a bright soul whose rhymes bubble over and sing as the billy does over the fire of yarran sticks. His sketches of country shows, coaching, &c., are the same — all stand on their own feet, to use a figure of speech, by reason of the happy Australian spirit that is in them.

(“Beyond the City Gates,” by Jack Moses. Australian Publishing Co., Sydney.)

Source:
The Sun (Sydney, NSW), 20 April 1924, p. 17

Editor’s notes:
&c. = an alternative form of “etc.”; an abbreviation of “et cetera” (also spelt “etcetera”), a Latin term (“et” meaning “and”, “cetera” meaning “the rest”) which is translated as “and the rest (of such things)”, used in English to mean “and other similar things”, “other unspecified things of the same class” or “and so forth”

billy = a metal pot or tin (usually with a wire or steel handle), used for boiling water over a camp fire (also known as a “billy can”)

yarran = a small hardy Australian tree, Acacia homalophylla, useful as a source for fodder, firewood, and fence posts

[Editor: Changed “Beyond the City Gate” to “Beyond the City Gates” (in the first instance).]