Page:Rambles in Australia (IA ramblesinaustral00grewiala).pdf/164

 and eight o'clock in the morning when we went on deck, and our host for the moment, a boy of about seventeen, came up smiling and helped us into our fur coats. "Are you always as nice as this to strangers?" we asked. "You're not strangers," he said, with genuine surprise, and even a little hurt. And it is that feeling that makes colonial travelling such a delightful experience. Even the conductor on the train will bid you a cordial farewell and hope you will enjoy yourself. England must seem a cold place to Australians when they come to it on a visit. We once heard some travelled Australians discussing this very point. After lavishing hospitality on his English visitors the Australian comes to London, and perhaps meets his former guest at a club. After some few minutes' conversation he says, "When are you going back?" and adds, "Ah, I hope I shall see you again before you go!" and that is all.

On the afternoon of our arrival in Melbourne, we went to a tea given by the Women's Union at the University. Australian women are in a very superior position to their British sisters; they have the vote, and their share in political life takes place quite unobtrusively and as a matter of course. Women's suffrage was adopted in Victoria comparatively recently, and the state