"He seized a piece of paper, and instituted what he called 'Eagar's Consultation.' He explained that he was out to collect sixty shillings. Sixty shillings, he explained, would pay the fare-coach and train--to Sydney of one schoolboy, give him money in his pocket to see all the sights, and bring him back the richer for life for the experience, and leaven for the whole loaf of them. "'Which schoolboy?' said Ninety Mile doubtfully, expecting to be met with 'top boy.' And never having been 'top boy' itself at any time of its life, it had but a distrustful admiration for the same. "'We must draw lots,' said Eagar. "Upon which Ninety Mile, being attracted by the sporting element in the affair, slowly subscribed its shilling a-piece, and the happy lot fell to Rattray. "He was a sober, freckled little fellow of ten, who walked five miles into Ninety Mile every morning, and five miles back again at night all the six months of the year during which Government held the cup of learning there for small drinkers to sip." I need not quote further about young Rattray's trip to Sydney and to the great ocean which Bush children, seeing for the first time, often think is just a big dam built up by some great squatter to hold water for his sheep. That extract shows the Bush school at its very hardest in the hot back-country. Of course, not one twentieth of the population lives in such places. I must give you a little of a description of a day in a Bush school in Gippsland, by E. S. Emerson, to correct any impression that all Australia, or even much of it, is like Ninety Mile: "A rough red stave in a God-writ song was the narrow, water-worn Bush track, and the birds knew the song and gloried in it, and the trees gave forth an accompaniment under the unseen hands of the wind until all the hillside was a living melody. Child voices joined in, and presently from a bend in the track, 'three ha'pence for tuppence, three ha'pence for tuppence,' came a lumbering old horse, urged into an unwonted canter. Three kiddies bestrode the ancient, and as they swung along they sang snatches of Kipling's 'Recessional,' to an old hymn-tune that lingers in the memory of us all. As they drew near to me the foremost urchin suddenly reined up. The result was disastrous, for the ancient 'propped,' and the other two were emptied out on the track. From the dust they called their brother many names that are not to be found in school books; but he, laughing, had slid down and was cutting a twig from a neighbouring tree. 'A case-moth! A case-moth!' he cried. The fallen ones scrambled to their feet. 'What sort, Teddy? What sort?' they asked eagerly. "But Teddy had caught sight of me. "'Well, what will you do with that?' I asked. "'Take it to school, sir; teacher tells us all about them at school.' The answer was spoken naturally and without any trace of shyness. "'Did you learn that hymn you were singing at school, too?'