The Wanderings of a Spiritualist

In some ways the Australians are more English than the English. We have / been imperceptibly Americanised, while our brethren over the sea have / kept the old type. The Australian is less ready to show emotion, cooler / in his bearing, more restrained in applause, more devoted to personal / liberty, keener on sport, and quieter in expression (as witness the / absence of scare lines in the papers) than our people are. Indeed, they / remind me more of the Scotch than the English, and Melbourne on a / Sunday, without posts, or Sunday papers, or any amenity whatever, is / like the Edinburgh of my boyhood. Sydney is more advanced. There are / curious anomalies in both towns. Their telephone systems are so bad that / they can only be balanced against each other, for they are in a class by / themselves. One smiles when one recollects that one used to grumble at / the London lines. On the other hand the tramway services in both towns / are wonderful, and so continuous that one never hastens one's step to / catch a tram since another comes within a minute. The Melbourne trams / have open bogey cars in front, which make a drive a real pleasure.

One of our pleasant recollections in the early days of our Melbourne / visit was a day in the bush with Mr. Henry Stead and his wife. My / intense admiration for the moral courage and energy of the father made / it easy for me to form a friendship with his son, who has shown the / family qualities by the able way in which he has founded and conducted / an excellent journal, _Stead's Monthly_. Australia was lucky ever to get / such an immigrant as that, for surely an honest, fearless and / clear-headed publicist is the most valuable man that a young country, / whose future is one long problem play, could import. We spent our day in / the Dandenong Hills, twenty miles from Melbourne, in a little hostel / built in a bush clearing and run by one Lucas, of good English cricket / stock, his father having played for Sussex. On the way we passed Madame / Melba's place at Lilydale, and the wonderful woods with their strange / tree-ferns seemed fit cover for such a singing bird. Coming back in / Stead's light American car we tried a short cut down roads which proved / to be almost impossible. A rather heavier car ahead of us, with two / youths in it, got embedded in the mud, and we all dismounted to heave it / out. There suddenly appeared on the lonely road an enormous coloured / man; he looked like a cross between negro and black fellow. He must / have lived in some hut in the woods, but the way his huge form suddenly / rose beside us was quite surprising. He stood in gloomy majesty / surveying our efforts, and repeating a series of sentences which / reminded one of German exercises. "I have no jack. I had a jack. Some / one has taken my jack. This is called a road. It is not a road. There is / no road."