baby Corporation of Melbourne, was appointed a Rate-collector, and in this capacity until his death" honestly looked after the bantling feeding-bottles. Hailing from the briny Scottish town of Kirkcaldy he seemed an imitation of Plimsoll in the deep interest manifested for the proper construction of ships, which he would have fabricated with what he designed " solid bottoms." T w o grand panaceas for the welfare of the world, he believed to consist in the building of ships with stout, durable understandings, and the wearing of skin flannels by the h u m a n race. H e was so gone on the " solid bottomed" ship theory that he wrote on it, lectured about it, and it was his walking and table-talk morning, noon, and night. H e once told m e that he passed scarcely a single night without dreaming of it. " Depend upon it, m y friends," he would reiterate, " solid-bottomed vessels are the only sort to be trusted to the mercies of wind and waves," and the somewhat ungenteel epithet, with " O l d " prefixed, ultimately grew an alias universally applied to the well meaning enthusiast,— " A n honest m a n close buttoned to the chin, Broadcloth without, and a w a r m heart within."
His hale, hearty form, and weather-beaten face were welcome and familiar objects in his peripatetic rate-collecting rounds. His friends were legion, and after attaining to a green, or rather red old age, Jamie departed this life, regretted by all w h o had the pleasure of his acquaintance. was another professional street-walker as well (though not so agreeably) known as Ballingall. Originally a school teacher, when pupils grew scarce, he betook himself to the collection of debts. Though what is k n o w n as a " dun," he possessed none of the impudent, bullying characteristics attributed to the historical A d a m of the fraternity, Joe D u n , the notorious money-hunter of the reign of Henry V I I Stevenson was in no way impertinent in the pursuit of an unpleasant vocation; but what was of more importance, he was unceasingly importunate, and popped on a defaulter in a silent, ghostly way, which had a more marked effect in unlocking reluctant pockets than bluster and bounce. Ballingall's "beat" was restricted to Lonsdale Ward; but Stevenson's extended everywhere. Anything in the shape of a bad debt had being. His business was large and lucrative, and his reputation such that unlimited confidence was placed in him. Though quiet and gentlemanly in his manner of dealing with his customers, it was remarkable that a hint of his n a m e to a defaulter was potent in extracting payment.
THOMAS STEVENSON
was another of that ilk, from the fact of his having instituted an industry, as he declared, "for the special benefit and invigoration of intoxicated nocturnal wayfarers." This was simply the manufacture of rather doubtfully embodied pies and saveloys of a strong un-aromatic flavour in a basket, and the vendor and vendibles taken together, constituted about as unwholesome a combination as could well be conceived. After dark " J e m m y " was almost invariably "in a state of beer." H e was one of the most drunken old reprobates of a not over sober era, and twice or thrice every week the day dawned over " J e m m y " anchored in the watchhouse. His police interviews were always of the funniest kind, and the offender frequently escaped punishment. O n e night on an unusually heavy " burst" in a low tavern in Little Bourke Street, he so overdrank himself (a feat of some difficulty) that he was picked dead out of the channel the next morning. There were some half-a-dozen characters w h o will be n o w presented with certain blank indications in consequence of the questionable antecedents of some of them, and the fact of their descendants surviving in the colony. It was a rule with the "expiree" convict settlers, whose sojourn at the penal settlement was no secret, to account for their enforced expatriation in a manner to minimize the enormity of the offence for which they had been transported. For instance ask an Englishman of the class referred to why he had been obliged
"JEMMY THE PIEMAN"
" T o leave his country for his country's good,"
A n d in nine cases out of ten the answer will be that his " lagging" was due to some poaching or to his dea^T^^I^^ in 19 Latrobe Street East, 32 or 33 years ago. I have often seen him -=.!?• ? the Government service, as a locker at Yander's Bond when9 doing business at the'B^nd he33was invariably SSSitS^ T c ^ T ^ ^ Z . t ^ ^ ^ l t ^ A *"" "* * " °' '
