The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day.  It would be difficult to overstate its importance.  It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.  Overshadows them?  I might almost say it blots them out.  Each of them gets attention, but not everybody’s; each of them evokes interest, but not everybody’s; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody’s; in each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory.  Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an enthusiasm which are universal—­and spontaneous, not perfunctory.  Cup Day is supreme it has no rival.  I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, which can be named by that large name—­Supreme.  I can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and preparation and anticipation and jubilation.  No day save this one; but this one does it.

In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the whole nation glad.  We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and Thanksgiving.  Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal.  Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone—­if still alive.  The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people.  They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry.  Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year.  The observance of Thanksgiving Day—­as a function—­has become general of late years.  The Thankfulness is not so general.  This is natural.  Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.

We have a supreme day—­a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a day which commands an absolute universality of interest and excitement; but it is not annual.  It comes but once in four years; therefore it cannot count as a rival of the Melbourne Cup.

In Great Britain and Ireland they have two great days—­Christmas and the Queen’s birthday.  But they are equally popular; there is no supremacy.

I think it must be conceded that the position of the Australasian Day is unique, solitary, unfellowed; and likely to hold that high place a long time.