One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends money upon public works—­such as legislative buildings, town halls, hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens.  I should say that where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a thousand.  And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of hospitals, also.  I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen hundred inhabitants.  It was built by private funds furnished by the villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were drawn from the same sources.  I suppose it would be hard to match this in any country.  This village was about to close a contract for lighting its streets with the electric light, when I was there.  That is ahead of London.  London is still obscured by gas—­gas pretty widely scattered, too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps.

The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of the world.  The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town, overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of Government House—­fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation ground containing eighty-two acres.  In addition, there are the zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where the international matches are played.  Therefore there is plenty of room for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as like that kind of work.

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.