Outside the southernmost parts of Victoria Australia has a climate, and the people can rejoice in midnight picnics. In the glorious southern moonlight one can read the small print of a newspaper. The air is cool after the overwhelming furnace of the day. The moonlight jaunts and junketings are characteristic and pleasant, and they offer an opportunity for the British matron who flourishes there as here--heaven bless her--to air her sense of morals in letters to the newspapers.
The creed of athleticism speaks its latest word here. The burial of poor young Searle, the champion sculler of the world, was a remarkable and characteristic sight. That he was a great athlete and a good fellow seems indisputable, but to the outsider the feeling excited by his early and mournful death looked disproportionate. Every newspaper, from the stately _Argus_ down to the smallest weekly organ of the village sang his dying song. He was praised and lamented out of reason, even for a champion sculler. The regret seemed exaggerated. At his funeral obsequies the streets were thronged, and thousands followed in his train. It was mournful that a young man should be struck down in the pride and vigour of his strength. It is always mournful that this should be so, but it is common, and the passion of the lament provoked weariness. The feeling was doubtless genuine, but it might possibly have had an object worthier of a nation's mourning.
Another fine athlete and good fellow is Frank Slavin, the prize-fighter. I have acknowledged a hundred times that I belong to a lost cause. My sympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring. Righdy or wrongly, I trace the growth of crimes of violence to the abolition of that glorious institution. I want to see it back again, with its rules of fair-play, and for its contempt for pain and its excellent tuition in temper and forbearance. I am an enthusiast, and being almost alone, am therefore the more enthusiastic. But I grew tired of the wild exultation in Slavin's prowess, the mad rejoicing over a victory which meant less than it would have done in the days which I am old enough to remember. In Australia better be an athlete than almost anything, except perhaps a millionaire.