Children, who often have three miles or more to walk to school, are expected to be up at four in the summer, and but little later in the winter, and milk ten or twelve cows before they start off on the long tramp to their legitimate day’s work. To the young Gippslanders the cow seems indeed an awful and all-devouring Moloch, eating up alike their youth, their hours for play, their strength, and vitality. I once had a most charming girl, the daughter of a prosperous Gippsland dairy farmer, as a sort of general household help. She could not touch milk—she could not bear the sight of it. If she brought me a glass of it on a salver, I have seen her throat swell and the tears come into her eyes in her effort to keep from retching. She was very pretty and refined, and her people were well off; but every day, almost ever since she had been able to reach the cow’s udder, she had milked from ten to fifteen cows, morning and evening, till—luckily for her—body and soul had alike rebelled. Her parents considered it most derogatory that she should be working with a stranger for a fixed wage; but she declared that she would do anything rather than go back to the farm, where her two little brothers of ten and twelve were already doing their share of the milking, each morning before they went to school and each evening after they returned. That the brains of children so overworked cannot be of much use to them during their school-hours is beyond a doubt; and that their physique suffers equally with their intelligence is clearly shown by the stunted and jaded little old men and women who fill the benches of the preparatory schools in the dairying districts. Quite the most beautiful piece of country within easy reach of Melbourne is, to my mind, to be found along the Healesville line. By the time that Croydon is reached, one hour only from the city, the scenery becomes completely rural. Here at least there is not the faintest hint of melancholy to be seen. The lie of the land is delightfully undulating. At every turn of the line one catches sight of compact little orchards, and gardens, and prosperous homesteads. There are trees everywhere, and peeps of the clear blue of the Dandenong ranges between them. [Picture: Ring-barked trees and maize] It is indeed all “a dimplement of ups and downs,” a prosperous, smiling land. In the early spring, when the orchards are out, and hillsides and valleys are white with plum-blossom, and the wattle runs a line of pure yellow along every hedgerow, rioting out in places, from sheer exuberance of growth, into veritable forest trees, each like a bouquet of yellow bloom; then, indeed, there is little of sadness to be seen, and if any is felt, it is but that we cannot renew our youth in common with Nature.