Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/468

 pass, if possible, in the colony where he does not habitually reside.

'Home-keeping youth have ever homely wit' is an aphorism which has been variously garbed. I endorse the dictum, with limitations. For the removal of that insidious mental fungus, provincial prejudice, there is no remedy like a moderate dose of travel.

Chief among the luxuries in the nature of Christmas gifts with which the wayfarer is presented on arrival in Melbourne may be reckoned an almost total immunity from the heat tyranny. The thermometer registers a scale usually associated with personal discomfort, but oppressiveness is neutralised by certain adjuncts of civilisation—lofty houses, cool halls, and shady trees. The ever-sighing sea-breeze—fair Calypso of the desert-worn Ulysses—invites to soft repose; while the prevalence of ice, as applied to the manufacture of comforting beverages, transforms thirst into a disguised blessing. The glare of the noonday sun, so harmful to the precious gift of sight, even to reason's throne, is here 'blocked,' to use the prevailing idiom of the week, by a hundred cunning devices. The marvels of capitalised industry, the results of science, the miracles of art, are daily displayed. Old friends, new books, freshly-coined ideas, strange sights, wonder-signs of all shades and hues, press closely the flying hours. The tired reveller sinks into dreamless rest each night, only to enter upon a fresh course of enjoyment and adventure with the opening morn.

I find myself following a multitude on one of the first days after arrival, not 'to do evil,' it may be humbly asserted, but to behold the Inter-Colonial Cricket Match. We step out past the Treasury and enter a side alley of Eden. The broad, asphalted walk leads through an avenue of over-arching elms—a close, embowered shade over which our enemy, the sun, has scant power. Anon we cross a winding streamlet, rippling through a gloom of fern-trees and a miniature tropical forest. There the thrush and blackbird flit unharmed, the moss velvet carpets the dark mould, and but a slanting sun-ray flecks the shadows from the close-ranked lofty exotics—'a place for pleading swain and whispering lovers made.' But the order of the day for all sorts and conditions of men and maids is plainly Richmond Park. Only a few deserters are seen from