In many things a child, she often looks forward to her wedding for the mere festivity of the occasion, and thinks how jolly it will be to have six bridesmaids, how nice she will look in her bridal dress, and how the other fellows will envy her chosen one.  Generally marrying two or three years younger than the English girl, she would consider herself an ’old maid’ at twenty-three; and for old maids she entertains the very minimum of respect, in spite of their rarity in the colonies.  Once married, she gives up to a large extent, if not entirely, the pomps and vanities of which she has had her full during spinsterhood, and devotes herself to her household, children, and husband.  She usually has a large family, and in them pays for all the sins of her youth.  She has had her fling, and for the rest of her life she lives but to serve her children and make them happy, recognising that in the antipodes ‘juniores priores’ is the adopted motto.

The Australian schoolboy is indeed a ‘caution.’  With all the worst qualities of the English boy, he has but few of his redeeming points.  His impudence verges on impertinence, and his total want of respect for everybody and everything passes all European understanding.  His father and mother he considers good sort of folk, whom he will not go out of his way to displease; his schoolmaster often becomes, ipso facto, his worst enemy, in the never-ceasing, war with whom all is fair, and obedience but the last resource.  Able to ride almost as soon as he can walk, he is fond of all athletic sports; but it is not till leaving school that his athleticism becomes fully pronounced:  thus reversing the order observed in England, where the great majority of the boys, who are cricket and football mad at school, more or less drop those pursuits as young men.  He is too well fed and supplied with pocket-money ever to feel the need for theft, but it is difficult to get him to understand Dr. Arnold’s views about lying and honour.  Though not wanting in pluck, he lacks the wholesome experience of a few good lickings, and can easily pass his school-days without having a single fight.  He is quarrelsome enough, but his quarrels rarely go farther than hard words and spiteful remarks.  At learning he is apt, having the spirit of rivalry pretty strong in him.

In all but one or two schools classes are too much mixed to make a gentlemanly tone possible, and such little refinements as tidiness of dress are out of the question.  When he is at home for the holidays, his mother tries to dig some manners into him (if she has any herself); but he has far too great a sense of the superiority of the rising generation to pay more attention to her than is exacted by the fear of punishment.  Unfortunately, that punishment is very sparingly made use of; and when it is used, it takes a very lenient shape, public opinion being strongly against corporal punishment, however mild, and according to children a number of liberties undreamed of in the old country.