Word: grahamism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...JOHN GRAHAM, CONVICT (129 pp.)-Robert Gibbings-A. S. Barnes...
With a fine command of Irish idiom, Cork man Gibbings tells the story of two people who were forced to live the lives of Stone Age man and woman in the Australian bush. One was John Graham, a feckless County Cork boy, who was transported for seven years for stealing six pounds of hemp. Assigned as convict-servant to a brutal farmer near Sydney, Graham grew sick and sore at a system by which a man might get as many as 1,600 lashes of a cat-o-nine-tails in a three-year period. He absconded into the bush...
...bush, a more primitive mercy than the King's justice awaited him. The "blackfellows" regarded white men as the returned ghosts of their own tribesmen. As a ghost, Graham was welcomed into a tribe, claimed as a husband by a lubra (squaw) and became a hunter of goanna lizard, a grubber for grubs. Author Gibbings' narrative suggests that to a lively Irishman this simple life was simply and literally a bore. Eventually, Graham gave himself up to "the authorities." But after he was back in irons, rumors came through to the New South Wales penal settlements that there...
...happy ending to this tragedy? Graham found his naked Mrs. Fraser, liberated her and was rewarded by a ticket of leave, i.e., conditional pardon, and ?10 for his trouble. Happiest of all, Mrs. Fraser and her rescuer were not misled by the romantic situation into any foolish notions about marrying, but blithely went their separate ways. Mrs. Fraser left Australia almost as quickly as she could put on some clothes and Graham followed as soon as he was allowed to take off his leg-irons...
...Influence. In measurable terms, Graham's impact on the big city was slight (TIME, July 8), but a growing number of clergymen think that the incalculable hidden influence may have been great. The overall effect of the crusade, says the Rev. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the New York Protestant Council, has been "magnificent"-"Billy and his team have done a tremendous amount for New York. Everywhere there is a quickening of the spirit-in the churches and out of them. And I know the long-range results will surprise a lot of people who were skeptical...