Page:Melbourne and Mars.djvu/98

96 high reading desk stand up and place an open book before him. I then felt the whole audience, as it were, getting itself ready for an effort. All the musicians that I could see were in position and ready. Then the minister touched a gong and twenty-two thousand people rose as a cloud, and the orchestra, broke into music and the choir and congregation burst into a jubilant song, beginning

From this moment, for an hour and a half (fifty minutes) I was carried beyond myself. I felt as if I could burst all but burst with joyful cries. I have never missed a service of the kind since. When it was over each line of spectators divided in the middle and walked off quickly each way. As one line went the next above it rose. Glancing round I saw that the same thing was going on in each gallery, and that the broad steps were never crowded, and that no one pushed against anyone else or moved with indecorous haste. In less than ten of our little minutes twenty-five thousand people had got into the streets. Where there is a population of one thousand millions there are crowds now and then."

The information above given is gathered from many pages of our diary.

A few more days have passed. Harley has gone to his work. Thomas Frankston and Mary and Emma Vaughan, Charley's mother and sister have taken up their quarters at the Equatorial. Harry Hern can scarcely be found anywhere else. Next second day a party of five go for a grand tour to see more of the Great City. Mother Vaughan has decided to remain and keep Mother Vance company, so that the party will now consist of five most congenial spirits. They are Thomas and Charles Frankston, father and son, but more like brothers. Harry Hern, a grand young fellow of eleven, with a reddish beard and a body like an athlete, and the inseparables, the blonde Helen Vance and the beautiful, laughing and arch-looking brunette Emma Vaughan. Full of health and happiness, and two of them wearers of the Magic Badge.

A railway line runs under the Grand Avenue to the Sea of Marmon, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles. This is the seaport of Sidonia. Our five friends went down by the morning express, and in two hours and a half they were on the shore of the second largest ocean on the planet. There is a great amount of traffic to this port, all the southern half of the city being supplied from it. The river Sidon, which cuts the city from its north-eastern corner diagonally, pours its clear flood into the ocean at this point.

For five hundred miles the Sidon is navigable for large vessels, and at that distance up and near to the Central Avenue there is an inland port, consisting of a pool two miles square and wharf accommodation for a score of great vessels. The whole course of the river from its mouth is never polluted. Ships going up are not allowed to discharge deck washings or any