The cool, capacious wine-cellars played their part on the occasion, being requisitioned for their choicest "cru." Soda was abundant, the weather warm, and the daily consumption of fluid must have been serious. When the "decamerone" expired, the guests, one and all, were ready to testify that never did mortals more deeply drink of Pleasure's chalice, never return to the prose of ordinary life with more sincere regret. CHAPTER XXI TALES OF A "TRAVELLER" This is a "horsey" sketch, possibly therefore unacceptable to the general reader. But any chronicle of my early days, connected as they were with the birth of a great city, would be incomplete without mention of the noble animal so dear to every youthful Australian. Reared in an atmosphere redolent of the swift courser's triumphs, often compelled to entrust life and limb to the good horse's speed, care indeed requires to be taken that the southern Briton does not somewhat overvalue his fascinating dumb companion--overvalue him to the exclusion from his thoughts of art and science, literature and dogma--to the banishment of rational conversation, and a preference for unprofitable society. So thought an old family friend, Mr. Felton Mathew (he upon his blood bay "Glaucus," and I upon my Timor pony), as we rode towards Enmore from Sydney in old, old days. He testily exclaimed, "For Heaven's sake, Rolf, don't go on talking about horses everlastingly, or you'll grow up like those colonial lads that never have another idea in their heads." I winced under the rebuke, but accepted it, as became our relative ages. None the less did I bear in my secret breast that Arab-like love for horses and their belongings which marks the predestined son of the Waste here as duly as in Yemen or the Nejd. How I longed for the day when I should have a station of my own, when I should have blood mares, colts and fillies, perhaps a horse in training, with all the gorgeous adjuncts of stud-proprietorship! The time came--the horses too--many a deeply joyous hour, many a thrill of hope and fear, many a wild ride and daring deed was mine Ere nerve and sinew began to fail In the consulship of Plancus. And now the time has passed. The good horses have trotted, and cantered, and galloped away from out my life; most of them from this fair earth altogether. Yet still, memory clings with curious fidelity to the equine friends of the good old time, indissolubly connected as they were with more important personages and events.