Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/151

 hills, for the city is almost flat. I enjoyed riding again in the front end of a grip-car, as I used to do in the old days in Kansas City. On one line, the fare is six cents per passenger for riding the shortest distance. I saw one short electric line; also, one horse-car line Years ago, the boomers declared that Melbourne needed a Convention hall, and one was finally built, after every citizen had been bored for a contribution, and soundly abused because he did not give more. Now the boomers are kept busy to find use for the hall. This month it is the scene of a Manufacturers' exhibition, and I saw a good many interesting things there yesterday afternoon. There is an aquarium in connection; and at this place I saw the most interesting thing I have seen since leaving home—a monkey mother with a baby four or five weeks old. Monkeys always interest me, but this monkey with a baby was so much like a human mother that I watched her half an hour. The monkey baby was not well, and the mother watched over it precisely as a human mother would have done. Occasionally the baby played with its toes, as you have seen human babies do. The mother gave all her attention to the baby; she did not neglect it for a moment. There is a human quality about monkeys that always attracts me. One I saw this morning at the zoölogical garden was an old chap, and he was frowsy and irritable, as old men are, and the younger ones were afraid of him, and scampered out of his way We are still meeting "Sonoma" passengers; we encountered one at this hotel last night—a Mr. Smart, a London publisher. Another passenger on the "Sonoma" is a newspaper man here, but we have not yet seen him.*