All the shops, excepting the tobacconists and confectioners and restaurants, are shut on Cup day, which is, indeed, a national holiday, and rather amusing efforts are made by the religious authorities to get their flock out of the way of temptation on such a day. One year, I remember, there was a large Sunday-school picnic at a public park some three miles from Melbourne, under the command of a portly Church of England dignitary. All through the earlier part of the day he was bland and cheerful, though occasionally absent-minded. About five o’clock, however, he became distinctly restless. He walked up and down the park gravely discussing the affairs of Church and State, but I observed that each turn landed us distinctly nearer to the fence abutting on the public highway, while again and again he paused to take out his watch and glance at it with an air of elaborate carelessness. As dog-carts and traps of all sorts—buggies they are called here—began to rattle along the road from the direction of Melbourne it became very evident that my companion was, as they say, “talking out of the back of his head,” while constantly interspersing his remarks with ejaculations regarding those misguided souls who had by that time lost their little “all,” or been precipitated, by their unholy gains, further than ever on the downward grade. At last he could bear it no longer, and with a decided step, which absolutely disregarded my mischievous attempt to turn, reached the fence, and hailed a passing vehicle: “Hey! hey! You there! who won the Cup?” He might just as well have said “How did it go?” or just raised his eyebrows, with an interrogatory glance, for anyone in Australia that day would have known what he meant, or merely have kept silent and waited for the gratuitous information to be tossed to him. I did not dare to ask, but I wondered then—and have wondered since—what he “had on.” Something considerable—and misplaced—as I should guess by the expression with which he received the reply. Everyone goes to the theatre the evening after the Cup race; at least, everyone who has any money left, or can find even standing room. The plays produced during this famous week are usually of the lightest description of musical comedy, or at the Royal and King’s the most sensational melodrama; the managers seldom taking the trouble to stage their best play, for people will go whatever happens to be on, while they are too completely in the humour to have a “good time,” or too sleepy after long days spent in the open air, to be severely critical.