a dandy.  But as it is, most of our city men are both uncomfortable and untidy.  Their clothes look as if they had been bought ready-made at a slop-shop.  The tie they prefer is a black bootlace; if not, it is bound to be of the most tasteless colour and pattern you can think of.  A heavy gold watch-chain and diamond ring is de rigueur, but otherwise they do not wear much jewellery.  Their hair, like their clothes, generally wants brushing, and hands and nails are not always so clean as they might be; but one knows that for the most part they tub every morning:  this is a consolation.

The bushman, at least, dresses sensibly.  Wen he comes into town, he puts on a slop-coat, but retains, if not a cabbage-tree, at any rate a wide-brimmed, soft felt hat.  Sacrificing comfort to ceremony, he generally puts on a collar, but he often kicks at a tie:  he finds he must draw a line somewhere.  But there is something so redolent of the bush about him, that one would not have him otherwise; the slop clothes even become picturesque from the cavalier fashion in which he wears them.  Note that his pipe never leaves his mouth, while the city man does not venture to smoke in any of the main streets.  He is a regular Jack ashore, this bushman.  A bull would not be more out of place in a china-shop, though probably less amusing and more destructive.  The poor fellow meets so many friends in town, that by the end of the day he has probably had more nobblers than are altogether good for him.  It is a very hard life that he leads, and he takes his pleasure, like his work, hardly.

If the Adelaidians are perhaps the least got-up, they are certainly the most suitably dressed of the inhabitants of Australian towns.  With them the top hat is comparatively of recent introduction.  Silk coats and helmets are numerous still, though becoming more rare every day.  Melbourne and Sydney think it infra dig. to allow themselves these little comforts, and Adelaide is gradually becoming corrupted.  It must, however, be added that the Adelaide folk are the most untidy, as the Melbourne are the least untidy of Australians.  Comfort and elegance do not always go hand in hand.  Tweeds are beginning to come into use amongst the upper middle, as they long have in the lower middle and lower classes.  Capital stuffs are made at Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat, and Geelong; but the patterns are very common.  In a dusty place like this it is impossible to keep black clothes clean, and tweeds give far the best wear and appearance of any stuff.  For my own part, I wear them winter and summer.

The working-classes can, of course, afford to be, and are, better dressed than at home; for though clothes are in reality much dearer, they are much cheaper in proportion to wages.  They do not often wear black coats in the week, but keep them for Sundays and grand occasions.  Directly an immigrant has landed, he feels that his first earnings must be devoted to a Sunday go-to-meeting suit.  His fellow-men all have one, and he does not like to feel himself their inferior, even with regard to a coat.