owing through. Ponderous watch-chain of
imitation gold. I judge that he couldn't tell the time by it, for he
asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which had been gay
when it was young; 5-o'clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and
marvelously soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the
ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a novelty--an
imitation dude. He would have been a real one if he could have afforded
it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his
expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a
dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a
sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so
enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied
daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me
that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing
everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his
four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter
four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity
--just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He
stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on
the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose
as the Prince and work his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he
would indolently watch the blue films curling up from his cigarette, and
inhale the stench, and look so grateful; and would flip the ash away with
the daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in the
most intentional way; why, it was as good as being in Marlborough House
itself to see him do it so like.

There was other scenery in the trip. That of the Hawksbury river, in the
National Park region, fine--extraordinarily fine, with spacious views of
stream and lake imposingly framed in woody hills; and every now and then
the noblest groupings of mountains, and the most enchanting
rearrangements of the water effects. Further along, green flats, thinly
covered with gum forests, with here and there the huts and cabins of
small farmers engaged in raising children. Still further along, arid
stretches, lifeless and melancholy. Then Newcastle, a rushing town,
capital of the rich coal regions. Approaching Scone, wide farming and
grazing levels, with pretty frequent glimpses of a troublesome plant--a
pa