Part 7 (1/2)

I saw no more of my plain-clothes man for a ether again My father, as still carrying on business in West Bromwich, was a letterpress printer only, but he received an occasional order for copperplate and lithographic hich he handed over either to a Mr Storey in Livery Street, or to the firm of W & B Hunt in New Street I had been over to call on hiht commission with either of these firms I called first on the Livery Street man, whose establish at a queer copperplate impression which lay on the counter before hi uncomht to go on with it; it strikes e a Russian note and that this is a part of the process” The lines on the paper lyphic puzzle which it was quite impossible to decipher I asked him what he intended to do with it and he answered that he would fulfil his order and set the police upon the track of the people who had given it I went on to Messrs Hunt's printing works in New Street and there I found one of the partners poring over what at first sight looked like a replica of the i about thewas said to ot out into the street again the first man I encountered was ht I was on the track of a little bit of business in his line and I took him back into the office of the copperplate printer and introduced him It had just occurred to istered they ht fit into each other and make out a consecutive docu of Polish forgers had conceived the idea that in a foreign country it would be possible to get two separate engravers to imitate each a portion of a fifty-rouble note and they hadwhen they had secured the plates Ime first hand and exclusive information with respect to the developht and forty hours he had effected his arrest and I was the only journalist in the toas allowed to know anything about it Had I stayed on in Birht have developed a sort of specialism in this direction, but circumstances drifted me away and it was not until soain and found hi a position on the detective staff at Scotland Yard

He told me how he came there and, in its way, it is one of the most remarkable little stories I re jeweller in Camberhose nahbourhood of St

Paul's Cathedral Seventeen years there had been in his employ a commercial traveller in whom he reposed the completest confidence This traveller had a very pretty turn for the invention of ornaold and precious stones and he was an accohtsman In his journeys about the country he carried with hilass, which represented in duplicate a tray of real jewellery and precious stones which was kept under lock and key at the showroon, that the one tray was substituted for the other, the pinchbeck i carried away by the commercial traveller The fact of the substitution was not discovered for so his ordinary route, should have been in Manchester or Liverpool He ired to at both places but no reply was received from him Not a doubt of the man's probity entered into his employer's mind, but when all efforts to trace him had failed the jeweller became alarmed for the safety of his employe and communicated with the police

Now, as fortune would have it, the young Birham detective had been sent up to London at this ti at Scotland Yard, he had put into his hands some copies of the docu the news of the traveller's disappearance, together with a woodcut reproducing a photograph which had been taken soly been surrendered to Mr Whitehead by the traveller's wife, as naturally in great distress concerning hieneral impression at the time that he had been decoyed away and murdered for the sake of the valuable property he carried, which was of such a nature that it old beingdisposed of in the ordinary way of business At Euston Station that afternoon, on his way back to Birham, the provincial detective had one fellow-traveller to whoular little circumstance, he would probably have paid no heed whatever The fellow-traveller had one article of luggage only, but he seemed to be unusually anxious about it It was a hat-box and when he had placed it on the rack overhead he appeared to be unwilling to leave it out of sight for more than an instant at a time He arose a score of times to readjust it and when he was not occupied in that way he kept a constant eye upon it ”I'reat Scripture reader,” said the detective tome the story, ”but when I was a kid my mother used to read the Bible to me every day and one text came into my mind when I saw that cove so anxious about his hat-box: 'Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also' It kept co that if it had not been for certain things about hie would have been very like theat The man described had features of a e, but the man described had red hair, thick red eyebrows and a beard and e was clean shaved and his hair and eyebroere as black as a crow's back, but I had got the idea in ain, and when he turned his face sideways to look out of thethe light fell on his cheek and, though the whisker had only just begun to sprout after his last shave, I could see that by nature he was as rusty as a jot I felt downright certain of hi his hat-box with hi to lose hilass of beer and a sandwich and cahaht, and having locked up his hat-box in it he went away to order a supply of clothes and linen, as I found out afterwards I nipped down to Moor Street and told theentleain, I was there all ready for him with a fellow-officer and we nabbed him at his bedroom door He nipped out a revolver and tried to shoot hiive up the key of the hat-box and there, sure enough, was every one of theout of the case and had thrown everything into it pell-mell and wrapped it up in two or three towels so, I suppose, that the contents of the hat-box couldn't jingle My getting him was just an accident from start to finish, and if it had not been for that text of Scripture I should never have given the ht, but it was reckoned a s here”

CHAPTER XIII

Eight Hours Day in Melbourne--The Australian Born-- Australians and the Mother Country--The Governor--_The Sydney Bulletin_--The Englishman in Australia--Australian Journalism--The Theatres--The Creed of Athleticisht which so pricked and stirred ht Hours Day in Melbourne The day intry and dismal Early rains had threatened the dispersal of the patient crohich lined the roads; the pave The loo whose sentiave each trade a reception as it passed, and sometimes the overnor There was plenty of noise and enthusiasm, but I was unawakened until the tail-end of the procession ca-place, and sorey-bearded our, whilst the whole orderly mob roared applause at them and Lord Hopetoun himself clapped his hands like a pleased boy at the theatre All the rey-headed, but as far as I could see, they were all stalwart and able-bodied, and the faces of a goodvehicle was suspended a strip of white cloth, and on this was painted the words, ”The Pioneers” These men were the makers of Victoria, the fathers of the proud and populous city which lay widespread about us There is no need to be eloquent about Melbourne

Tooits praises already But it is one of the cities of the world; it has a population of over half a ues, its theatres, its hotels; it is as well furnished in reythe beginners of it When I first visited Melbourne I was introduced to a man who, between the present site of the Roman Catholic Cathedral and the present site of the Town Hall, had been ”bushed” for a whole day and lost in the virgin forest I knew already how young the city was, how strangely rapid its growth had been; but I did not realise what I knew, and these elderly strangers' bodily presence ht concrete

That beautifully appropriate and dramatic finish struck the same chord of wonder, but with a fuller sound

These Antipodean notes, dealing with the conditions of so of their vivid interest by the lapse of time, and illustrate in a re made for the world, while it hardly has tih in itself, but the Victorian, quite justifiably, refuses to think so Men come back from London, and Paris, and Vienna, and New York, and think Melbourne the finer for the contrast In reality, it is very very far fro so; but it is useless to reason with patriotism and its convictions The men of Victoria run devotion to their soil to an extreme I was told an exquisite story, for the truth of which I had a soleh it carries its evidences of veracity and needs no bolstering from without An Australian-born--he came of course from that Gascony of the Antipodes which has Melbourne for its capital--visited the home country

An old friend of his father was his cicerone in London and took hist other places, to Westlish, ”you have nothing like that in Australia” ”My word,” said the colonial export, ”no fear! You should just see the Scotch church at Ballarat!”

The tale is typical I would tell it, in the hope that he would find it an _open-sesas, to any fair- out to Victoria It is a little outrageous to the stranger, but in it the general public sentinified many times, but not in the least caricatured The patriotic prejudice goes everywhere It lives at the very roots of life

Truthful men will tell you that London is vilely supplied with cabs in comparison with Melbourne They believe it They will tell you that the flavours of English etables are vastly inferior to those they know at home And they believe it To the unprejudiced observer Melbourne is the worst cabbed city in the world, or aouratory For h schools at whatsoever ourmandise I am content wi' little and cantie wi'sole, after two years banishment from that delicious creature! How I savour lish strawberry to be!

But to the New South Welsh-block and to the Victorian it is foolishness Mr Sala preached it years ago and the connoisseurs of the Greater Britain of the south have never forgiven hilorious cli as a climate They take their weather in laminae, set on end You walk froical astonishment lies in wait at every corner of the street It blows hot, it blows cold, it scorches, it freezes, it rains, it shi+nes, and all within the compass of an hour Yet these wonderful Australians love their weather Other people would endure it They brag about it I think they must be the happiest people in the world

By the way, I ment expressed above with respect to the Australian table I tasted in Adelaide a favourable specimen of the wild turkey, and I believe it to be the noblest of game birds Its flavour is exquisite and you may carve at its bounteous breast for quite a little army of diners And the remembrance of one friendly feast puts me in mind of many Is there anywhere else on the surface of our planet a hospitality so generous, so free and boundless, as that extended to the stranger in Australia? If there be I have not known it They meet you with so complete a welcome

They envelop you with kindness There is no _arriere pensee_ in their cordiality, no touch lacking in sincerity This is a characteristic of the country The native born Australian differs in inal stock, but in this particular he reed You present a letter of introduction and this makes you the immediate friend of its recipient He spares no pains to learn what you desire and then his whole aim and business in life for the moment is to fulfil your wishes Your host will probably be less polished than an English an equal income, but his _bonho like an English welcolish prejudice

This very openness of welcome, the sincerity of heart in which your host stands before you, is the means whereby the traveller first learns to be dissatisfied He has co from him in all directions--a very porcupine of pre-conception He is not merely persuaded that the colonies are loyal but he is certain they are loyal after his own conceptions of loyalty

So long as he encounters only the old folks he will find his pre-conceptions flattered, but he will not go long before heinterpreted signify the Australian Natives association), and then he must be prepared to be astonished beyond in to see how natural the position of the Australian native is, and then he will cease to be astonished, though he e and powerful It includes within its ranks a great nuer of those already risen Speaking broadly, its aspiration is for a separate national life It will ”cut the painter”--that is the phrase--which ties it to the old shi+p of state In its ranks are many who love the old country and reverence its history and traditions, and these an Englishman only remarks with a readier excuse for what he must esteem an error But there are others, and the hted, is that they are s English There are matised as dullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of English history in the State schools The feeling against England is not a fantastical crank, it is atheir seats in serious protesting silence when the health of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found in private converse that hundreds approve their action but do not follow it because they dislike to be thought singular The out-and-out journalistic supporters of the country vilify the mother country as a whole They belittle its history and besmirch its rulers Loyal Australians pooh-pooh these prints and entreat the stranger within their gates to believe that they are despised and without influence

The stranger has only to travel to learn better than this The strongest current of Australian feeling is setting with the tide of growing power against the er and derision in the minds of many Australians is certain They live entrenched in the flutters of their own opinion, and are blind to the fact of the pohich is ainst the on around thereat dependencies is shaovernors, fro, and many of whom have been men of especial capacity, do not coton saw overnor before hile story of a man of the country who expressed in drunken Saxon his opinion of existing forovernment; but the tale was jocularly told and was not supposed to have any importance It could have had no iovernor would be likely to do A governor sees s sort) frequent his receptions--the fashi+onable classes, who are far lish thee, and then the wealthier of the tradespeople It is proven every day that a deround for a man with a title The very rarity of the distinction makes it overnors of one of our great colonies occupies a position which is vastly higher in public esteem than that of his fellow-noblemen at home He is the local fount of honour To sit at his table, and to be on terhest social ambition He is the direct representative of the Crown, and the people who desire to associate with hi forovernment, or, if they hold theovernor responds to the toast of his own health and talks of those ties which bind and must bind the mother country to her children His hearers are at one with hiour Absence frorow fonder Their loyalty is perfervid Everybody goes ho--sleever and execrates the name of the country which bore his father and mother

The journal just nahtest Australian verse and the best Australian stories find their way into its coluh the high standard is not alwaysthus spoken an honest mind in its favour I leave est-headed and most mischievous journal in the world People try to treat it as a negligible quantity when they disagree with it But I have seen as much of the surface of the country and as much of its people as most men, and I have found the pestilent print everywhere, and everywhere have found it influential For so stories of the iniquities of prison rule in Tas but the power of the working classes makes a repetition of these atrocities impossible

It colish, and co all things English as English England and the Englishe Of course, its readers are not all sincere, though doubtless soree with it read it for its stage and social gossip; but there is a class of working-ospel, and it is one of the factors in the growing contest uninstructed Australians

Another and lishtolerance which I have seen the travelling cockney extend to men of the colonies, orth a thousand of hilishman unintentionally insult a host at his own table, and set everybody on tenterhooks by his blundering assumption that the colonists are necessarily inferior to ho nobody finds hi more kindly to the race which sends out that intolerable kind of lassed idiot, beairl, don't you know She'd read George Eliot Never was more surprised in entlemen bred and born

This kind of person has his influence, and on that ground he is to be regretted The students of ood as meat and drink; but we cannot all be Touchstones, and perhaps, on the whole, it would be well if he were buried