There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure.  If you enter your name on the Visitor’s Book at Government House you will receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing can be proven against you.  And it will be very pleasant; for you will see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and several friends to your list.  The Governor will be in England.  He always is.  The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will not see them.  When they are appointed they come out from England and get inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship and go back home.  And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work.  I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor.  The others were at home.

The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies, but he hasn’t.  There isn’t any war, and there isn’t any veto in his hands.  And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line.  The country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto, while a fact, is yet mainly a name.

Thus the Governor’s functions are much more limited than are a Governor’s functions with us.  And therefore more fatiguing.  He is the apparent head of the State, he is the real head of Society.  He represents culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear good fruit.  He creates the fashion, and leads it.  His ball is the ball of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.

He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped for that.

Another of Sydney’s social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House; which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water.  The trim boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government House.  The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity of his office.

Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a fine steam pleasure-launch.  Your richer friends own boats of this kind, and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day seem short.

And finally comes the shark-fishing.  Sydney Harbor is populous with the finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world.  Some people make their living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them.  The larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty feet long.  You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the shark belongs to you.  Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.