But wealthy ladies ‘to the manner born’ are not so numerous in Australia that I need dwell long on the drawbacks of their position.  It is at any rate happier than that of the parvenue, unless the mere fact of being arrivee confers any special enjoyment.  At what has she arrived?  At carriages, at dresses, at houses and furniture, and at servants of a style she is totally unaccustomed to and unfitted for.  When you tremble before your butler, and have to learn how to behave at table from your housekeeper, wealth cannot be unalloyed pleasure.  Without education and taste, the parvenue has small means of enjoying herself except by making a display which costs her even more anxiety and trouble than it does money.  Wiser is the rich woman who contents herself with the same style of life as she was accustomed to in her youth, adding to it only the things that she really wants—­a more roomy house, a couple of women-servants, and a buggy.  Thus she can feel really comfortable and at home; but unfortunately for their own and their husbands ‘peace of mind’ these poor women are too often ambitious to become what they are not.  Even leaving aside the discomforts which are always allied to pretentiousness, the poor rich woman has a hard time of it.  What can she do with herself all day long?  She has not gone through that long education up to doing nothing which enables English ladies of means to pass their time without positive boredom.  She has no tastes except those which she does not dare to gratify, and becomes a slave to the very wealth whose badge she loves to flaunt.

The Australian working-man is perhaps too well paid to suit us poor folks who are dependent upon him; but, for all that, comfortable means bring an improvement in the man as well as in his condition.  It is very trying to have—­as I recently had—­to go to four plumbers before I could get one to do a small job for me, and still more trying to find the fourth man fail me after he had promised to come.  Such accidents are of everyday occurrence in colonial life, and they make one doubt the advantages of a wealthy working-class.  But, independent and difficult to please as the colonial working-man is, his carelessness is only a natural consequence of the value set on his labour.  Provided he does not drink, you can get as good a day’s work out of him as at home.  He will pick his time as to when he will do your job, and hesitate whether he will do it at all; but having once started on it, he generally does his best for you.  Too often the sudden increase of wages is too much for his mental equilibrium, and a man who was sober enough as a poor man at home, finds no better use for his loose cash than to put it into the public-house till.  But as a class I do not think Australian working men are less sober than those at home.  Those who are industrious and careful in a very few years rise to be masters and employers of labour, and are at all times so sure of constant employment that