German armies to the fact that the officers were accustomed to use the blackboard and a piece of chalk—that is to say, to their exactness of scientific detail. In peaceful pursuits we have the same results. The little canton of Zurich, in Switzerland, with a population about a third of that of Victoria, succeeded in establishing a ribbon trade, producing a million and a half annually, ten times more than the ribbon trade of Macclesfield and Coventry; and this trade sprang out of their industrial schools. Our schools might be made seed-fields of national prosperity by uniting industrial teaching with ordinary education, especially the teaching of industries suitable to the climate, but unknown to our Northern population.
A few months after my arrival in Melbourne, the constituency of Dalhousie became vacant. It was an immense territory, containing farming districts, mining districts, and several substantial towns.[1] A requisition was sent to me inviting me to become a candidate, which was so largely signed that I determined to accept it. At Kyneton—the principal town—deputations offered me the support of nearly all the districts in the constituency. My central committee divided a territory of a hundred and fifty miles into convenient meeting places, and announced in one advertisement the successive days on which I would address the electors.[2]
It is creditable to the generosity and civilisation of the
- ↑ A young priest in this district was fond of telling a story, which deserves to outlive the political gossip of the day. He accompanied his bishop on a pastoral visitation, and so pleased the prelate that he made him a gift of a handsome horse he had lent him for the journey. The young priest thought he could not do better than name the horse after the donor, and he called it "The Bishop." Saddle the bishop, water the bishop, bring out the bishop, became the ordinary language of the stable. After a time the Bishop made a pastoral visit to the parish, and was met at the station and driven home in triumph, and all the notabilities of the district invited to meet him at dinner. As they sat down to table the priest's groom put his head in at the door demanding, "Might I say a word to your Reverence." "Not now, Mike, not now, you see I am engaged with his Lordship; come to me when we leave the dining-room." "It will be too late then, your Reverence." "You had better hear him at once," says the bishop good-naturedly. "Go on, Mike, his Lordship permits me to hear you." "It's a horrid hot day, your Reverence, and that drive from the railway was killing. Don't you think I ought to throw a bucket of water over the bishop?"
- ↑ August, 1867.
