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26 "own correspondent," under the head of Ballaarat, be such a dry, soapy concern that will neither blubber nor blather, yet The Age remained the diggers' paper.

The Ballaarat Times was all the go, on the whole extent of the diggings. Soon enough the reporter, aye, the editor himself, will both appear in propria persona.

XVII.

When our southern sky is overloaded with huge, thick, dark masses, and claps of thunder warn us of the pending storm, then a gale of wind is roaring in space, doing battle with the bush, cowing down man and beast, sweeping away all manner of rottenness. This fury spares not, and desolation is the threat of the thunder.

A kind Providence must be blessed even in the whirlwind. Big, big drops of rain fight their way through the gale; soon the drops muster in legions, and the stronger the storm, the stronger those legions. At last they conquer; then it pours down—that is, the flood is made up of legions of torrents.

Is the end of the world now at hand? Look at the victorious rainbow! it reminds man of the covenant of our God with Noah, not far from this southern land. The sun restores confidence that all is right again as before, and nature, refreshed and bolder, returns again to her work.

Hence, the storm is life.

Not so is the case with fire. Devouring everything, devouring itself, fire seems to leave off its frenzy, only to devour the sooner any mortal thing that comes in the way to retard destruction. A few embers, then a handful of ashes, are the sole evidence of what was once kingly of beggarly.

Fire may destroy, consume, devour, but has no power to reduce to "nothing."

Hence the calamity of fire is death.

The handful of ashes lie lifeless until a storm forces them into the living order of nature, which, when refreshed, has the power to ingraft those ashes to, and make them prosper with, the grain of mustard seed. Hence death is life.

Such is the order of Providence. Now, good reader, watch the handful of ashes of what was once Bentley's Eureka Hotel.