There was some interest for me in prowling about the haunts of my youth; but to be honest, I must admit there was no pleasure, even of the mildly melancholy kind. However beautiful their surroundings, no New World cities are in themselves beautiful or picturesque. That which is new in them is--new, and well enough; and that which is not new or newish is apt to be rather shabby than venerable. I apprehend that Old World cities would be quite intolerably shabby and tumble-down but for the fact that, when they were built, joint stock companies were unknown, and men still took real pride in the durability of their work. We have made wondrous progress, of course, and are vastly cleverer than our forbears; but for the bulk of the work of our hands, there is not very much to be said when its newness has worn off. I thought seriously for an hour or more of going to Dursley to visit its Omniferacious Agent, and, more particularly, perhaps to see his wife; possibly even to settle in the neighbourhood of that pretty little town. Then I reckoned up the years, and decided against this step. The Omnigerentual One would be an old man, if alive; and his wife--I recalled her fragile figure and hopeless invalidism, and thought I would sooner cherish my recollections of five-and-twenty years than put them to the test of inquiry. On the fourth or fifth day I drove with my bags to the handsome new railway station which had taken the place of the rambling old Redfern terminal I remembered, and took train for the north. I found I had no wish, at present, to visit Werrina, Myall Creek, or Livorno Bay, and my journey came to an end a full fifty miles south of St. Peter's Orphanage. Here, within five miles of the substantial township of Peterborough, I came, with great ease, upon the very sort of place I had in mind: a tiny cottage of two rooms, with a good deep verandah before, and a little lean-to kitchen, or, in the local phrase, skillion, behind; two rough slab sheds, a few fruit trees past their prime, an acre of paddock, and beyond that illimitable bush. I bought the tiny place for a hundred and five pounds, influenced thereto in part by the fact that the daughter of its owner, a small 'cockatoo' farmer's wife, lived no more than a quarter of a mile away; and was willing, for a modest consideration, to come in each day and 'do' for me, to the extent of cooking one hot meal, washing dishes, and tidying my little gunyah. Thus, simply and swiftly, I became a landed proprietor, and was able to send to Sydney for my heavy chattels, knowing that, for the first time in my life, I actually possessed in my own right a roof to shelter them withal, though it were only of galvanised iron. (The use of stringy bark for the roofing of small dwellings seemed to have ceased since my last sojourn in these parts, the practical value of iron for rain-water catchment having thrust aside the cooler and more picturesque material.)