Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/74

 parsonage in Kent—for though of an alien faith, the brilliant Australian-Irishman was partial to the society of that all but extinct type of English cleric who knew his Aristophanes better than his Chrysostom, and who was in reality the clean and decorous Anglican analogue of that historic clerical worldling, the "French Abbé" of the last century. The evening wore merrily on without so much as an allusion to the great emigration question. Suddenly, prompted by a sense of duty, or perhaps by a vision of his colleague's greater success as a fisher of men in the crowded streets of Birmingham and Manchester, Mr. Dalley said:—

"Cannot you help me in selecting some really deserving fellows in your parish who would be likely to make good colonists?"

The jovial parson paused, to give the subject thought, toying lightly with his glass of port.

"I know no one," said he, after a while, "except old Briggs; he is getting on in years, and is very asthmatic, and too fond of malt liquor. I think, perhaps, we could spare him."

After this Mr. Dalley gave over haunting parsonages as a means of finding "hardy pioneers to people the waste places of his great colony.