All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people, and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this.  The English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler.  As to the other English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I know by experience that the description fits them.  I will not go more particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.

Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 “), tried to distribute his gratitude, and was not lucky: 

“The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality.  The treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with pleasure our stay amongst them.  In the character of hosts and hostesses they excel.  The ‘new chum’ needs only the acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful kindnesses.  Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit, none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney.”

Nobody could say it finer than that.  If he had put in his cork then, and stayed away from Dubbo——­but no; heedless man, he pulled it again.  Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he had said about Sydney had grown dim: 

“We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its inhabitants.  Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality and reserve.  In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same congenial manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with elsewhere.  In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and kind-heartedness.”

I wonder what soured him on Sydney.  It seems strange that a pleasing degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a man up and give him the panegyrics so bad.  For he has them, the worst way—­any one can see that.  A man who is perfectly at himself does not throw cold detraction at people’s architectural productions and picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are old, old symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the panegyrics.