Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/471

 holiday-loving race, certes, are we Australians. Had Victoria been a Roman province, her populace would have been regally furnished with panem et circenses, or known the reason why. With the eight hours' system, high wages, and frequent holidays, the working-man of the period, compared with his European brother, is an aristocrat. But here we are once more on the Flemington race-course, and of it, as of the Melbourne cricket-ground, we feel inclined to assert (pace Trollope) that it must be, in its way, the best in the world.

Much thoughtful care has been bestowed upon the grounds, the buildings, the adjuncts; much money spent since the old days, when it differed little from an ordinary cattle-paddock. And the results are bewildering. Whence this lovely lawn 'with verdure clad,' where, amid flowers and fountains, crowds of well-dressed people stroll and linger, protected as in their own gardens from inconvenient sound or sight? this broad, smooth terrace-promenade below the Stand? this immense edifice, where in sheltered comfort every stride of the race can be seen? these perfect arrangements for the protagonists—brute and human—in the Olympian games we have come to witness? Is this the place where often amid heat and dust, not infrequently under soaking showers, the same sports have been witnessed by the much-enduring crowd? or has the Eastern enchanter of our boyhood carried off the ancient race-course bodily, and replaced it with this garden of Armida?

If the surroundings are complete, and the concomitants exhilarating, the weather is delicious. All things have combined to make this first-born of the opening year a day of days. The unobtrusive sun is merely warm; the bright, blue sky softly toned by fleeting clouds; the sea-breeze whispers of the wave's cool marge and ocean caves.

'On such a day it were a joy to die,' and as in the first race—the 'Hurdle'—one beholds Sparke's rider pulling desperately at the chain-bit in his horse's mouth, as he fights madly for the lead, it appears but too probable that he is destined for the sacrifice. The violent chestnut, however, contrary to an established theory, does not run himself out, or smash his jockey. He retains the lead gallantly, and, with the exception of a perilous bang over the last hurdle, touches nothing. He wins the race from end to end, confounding the backers of Lady Hampden and Vanguard, the latter horse