If I ever set up business in Australia it would be in three "lines"—frying pans, false teeth, and patent medicines.
Everything is washed down in Australia with tea. It is a dangerous beverage as it is made there, in witness thereof are the clayey complexions and dyspeptic noses of the women. Why they don't drink wine, the natural beverage of the country, I never could make out until I tasted the vintages. But they are improving. Some foreigners are making very decent wine in Australia just now; but the Australians won't drink it until it is exported and returns again to the country with a French brand on it. The same remark applies to most things in Australia. They don't manufacture anything. I once dined with a squatter in Queensland, and there was not an article of furniture in the room that had been made in Australia, and not a thing on the table, except the vegetables, but was imported. The table linen, the glassware, the knives, the crockery—all were imported. The wine was imported, so was the salmon, and the coffee, and his "Missus's" cat was Manx. And yet there wasn't a thing in the room but the raw material could have been produced in the country, right down to the condiments.
Chapter XV.
THE AUSTRALIAN POETS.
When I went into the Public Library at Sydney and asked for the catalogue of the Australian poets I thought the attendant, in complying, had handed me the Federal electoral rolls. He said, however, that it was all right. There are just about as many people anxious to make the poetry of the country as there are to make its laws, and among them all they have made a mess of both. Parkes, addressing a public meeting, once said, "I would rather be a third-rate poet than a first-class politician." Somebody interjected: "Well, aren't you?" I thank God when I think of the few awful hours I spent with the Australian muse (or, more correctly speaking, bemuse) that I have read very little Australian poetry. Nevertheless I have read enough to enable me to arrive at a definition of what really constitutes a right to be called a poet, and it is: Any person of either sex who can write in metre without being laughed at. In applying this golden rule it will be seen that there are no poets in Australia except the alleged humorous versifiers.
Sir Henry Parkes, deceased, is generally referred to in the Australian Press as poet, politician and patriot. I haven't the time to inquire into all the other things, but I did spend an hour with his "Fragmentary Thoughts" and "Stolen Moments." They are well worth perusing, and I think everybody ought to read those sympathetic lines "To a Beautiful and Friendless Child; aged four years." The child was aged four years; it is not "an early poem," which fact I thought it just as well to mention before quoting the opening stanza:
"Did shock of birth-bliss slay thy mother?
How from all kindred torn?
Than God's all-seeing eye, what other
Said that a man was born?"
But the poet is even better in his stirring moods, as in the well-known (in Australia) "Australian Youth's Song." Here is one of the "jewels four lines long":—
"We live in hope—we live in hope!
Forget the day that's gone!
Or dim or bright, the future's light
Is all to guide us on."
A strong man would shed tears over the same poet's "The Dying Convict's Letter." For that reason I shan't quote it any further than to say it begins: