There was the usual leader on the Government; and an agitation was still
carried on, by means of horribly-constructed correspondence to both
papers, for a bridge over Dry-Hole Creek at Dustbin--a place where no
sane man ever had occasion to go.

I took up the 'unreliable contemporary', but found nothing there except
a letter from 'Parent', another from 'Ratepayer', a leader on the
Government, and 'A Trip to Limeburn', which latter I suppose was made in
opposition to the trip to Drybone.

There was nothing new in the town. Even the almost inevitable gang of
city spoilers hadn't arrived with the railway. They would have been
a relief. There was the monotonous aldermanic row, and the worse than
hopeless little herd of aldermen, the weird agricultural portion of whom
came in on council days in white starched and ironed coats, as we had
always remembered them. They were aggressively barren of ideas; but
on this occasion they had risen above themselves, for one of them had
remembered something his grandfather (old time English alderman) had
told him, and they were stirring up all the old local quarrels and
family spite of the district over a motion, or an amendment on a motion,
that a letter--from another enlightened body and bearing on an
equally important matter (which letter had been sent through the
post sufficiently stamped, delivered to the secretary, handed to the
chairman, read aloud in council, and passed round several times for
private perusal)--over a motion that such letter be received.

There was a maintenance case coming on--to the usual well-ventilated
disgust of the local religious crank, who was on the jury; but the case
differed in no essential point from other cases which were always coming
on and going off in my time. It was not at all romantic. The local youth
was not even brilliant in adultery.

After I had been a week in that town the Governor decided to visit
it, and preparations were made to welcome him and present him with
an address. Then I thought that it was time to go, and slipped away
unnoticed in the general lunacy.

The Never-Never Country.

By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track--
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand--
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.

It lies beyond the farming belt,