ll tell you what to do. In Maryborough there's an
American who has lived there half a lifetime; a fine man, and prosperous
and popular. He will be on the lookout for you; you won't have any
trouble. Sleep in peace; he will rout you out, and you will make your
train. Where is your manager?"

"I left him at Ballarat, studying the language. And besides, he had to
go to Melbourne and get us ready for New Zealand. I've not tried to
pilot myself before, and it doesn't look easy."

"Easy! You've selected the very most difficult piece of railroad in
Australia for your experiment. There are twelve miles of this road which
no man without good executive ability can ever hope--tell me, have you
good executive ability? first-rate executive ability?"

"I--well, I think so, but----"

"That settles it. The tone of----oh, you wouldn't ever make it in the
world. However, that American will point you right, and you'll go.
You've got tickets?"

"Yes--round trip; all the way to Sydney."

"Ah, there it is, you see! You are going in the 5 o'clock by
Castlemaine--twelve miles--instead of the 7.15 by Ballarat--in order to
save two hours of fooling along the road. Now then, don't interrupt--let
me have the floor. You're going to save the government a deal of
hauling, but that's nothing; your ticket is by Ballarat, and it isn't
good over that twelve miles, and so----"

"But why should the government care which way I go?"

"Goodness knows! Ask of the winds that far away with fragments strewed
the sea, as the boy that stood on the burning deck used to say. The
government chooses to do its railway business in its own way, and it
doesn't know as much about it as the French. In the beginning they tried
idiots; then they imported the French--which was going backwards, you
see; now it runs the roads itself--which is going backwards again, you
see. Why, do you know, in order to curry favor with the voters, the
government puts down a road wherever anybody wants it--anybody that owns
two sheep and a dog; and by consequence we've got, in the colony of
Victoria, 800 railway stations, and the business done at eighty of them
doesn't foot up twenty shillings a week."

"Five dollars? Oh, come!"

"It's true. It's the absolute truth."

"Why, there are three or four men on wages at every station."

"I know it. And the station-business doesn't pay for the sheep-dip to
sanctify their coffee with. It's just as I say. And accommodati