But I have wandered far from the ship with her furled sails and my first impressions of the new country: the coming and going of Custom-House and Health Officers, the bustle, the sunshine on the quay, and, above all, the curiously homelike Cockney drawl, which is so marked a characteristic of the Australian of to-day, all of which has amalgamated together in my mind, into a vivid and clear-cut picture. It is all very well to write as if I precipitated myself bodily and instantaneously into the hearts and homes of the people, for I did not. I liked them as little as they liked me. And that was very little, for it was a long time before I could be brought to realize that any relation of England could find any possible virtue to be proud of excepting that relationship. That the whole country, indeed, was not a sort of benevolent, though ignorant, country cousin, touchingly anxious to hear all about the head of the family, and be taught the true value of life by any of its scions. As a matter of fact, I had conceived a very clear mental picture of Australia as a burly, farmer-like person, with one hand outstretched in welcome, the other filled with desirable billets of all sorts, which awaited some new-comer, with that wide outlook possible only to one who has rubbed shoulders with the oldest civilization, the completest culture. It took me, indeed, months to realize that what is old, and to our minds completely well established, may be suspected of blue mould. Also that the only relation, likely to be of any use to the impecunious newcomer, is that “Uncle” whom I have discovered to be as outwardly ubiquitous and inwardly suspicious and grudging as in England. Finding, therefore, that everything was going on much the same as though nothing very exciting was expected; and that Australia, as a nation, did not seem to be awaiting me on the quay with open arms, I hustled my few belongings through the Customs, took a cab—the most medieval institution in Melbourne, a sort of closed waggonette, and incredibly rackety—and drove up to a Coffee Palace, which had been recommended to me as cheaper than an hotel.