Page:The Black Cat v01no03 (1895-12).pdf/3





T was late in the evening of Melbourne Cup Day. In one of the dining-rooms of the Victoria Club three men sat smoking and talking earnestly together. Certainly the events of the last sixteen hours furnished ample subject for conversation. Melbourne Cup Day means to the Australian all that Derby Day does to the Englishman. It means, also, many things that even the greatest sporting event of the English year cannot mean to the inhabitants of the compact little island, provided with so many other facilities for amusement and intercourse. In this land of tremendous distances—where four million people occupy an area equal to that of the United States,—in this island continent of opposites—where Christmas comes in midsummer and Fourth of July in midwinter, where swans are black and birds are songless,—this is the one day when all classes and conditions assemble at one place and take their pleasures as a unit.

From Victoria and New South Wales, from North, South, and West Australia, from Queensland, even from Tasmania and the sister colony of New Zealand, separated from the continent by miles of water, visitors of all kind and degree had flocked by the thousands. When the starting flag fell that morning there were Copyright, 1895, by the Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights reserved. 1