Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/176

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MY LIFE IN TWO HEMISPHERES

and show a generous desire to spend their wealth on adorning and civilising the country which produced it, but it is a more common practice to squat in the Melbourne Club and leave the inn to be managed by a "super." The rural hotels are generally comfortless, though supplied with a rude abundance. Every meal is furnished with the heavy, unwholesome dainties of a bush inn, but nothing clean, wholesome, or appetising.

The gold frenzy has completely disappeared; for the last few years the streets of Melbourne have been safer than the streets of London at the same period. In the suburbs the practice of leaving windows unbarred and articles of daily use on the open verandah seems to the stranger to argue a security like that of the golden age, but means simply that the population are almost universally in circumstances which place them above the temptation to steal.