If freight-cars disappear, why not palaces? So the story
seems to me of more worth, and I put it upon paper.
It was on my second visit to Melbourne that I heard
it. It was late at night, in the coffee-room of the
Auckland Arms, rather an indifferent third-class house,
in a by-street in that city, to which, in truth, I should
not have gone had my finances been on a better scale than
they were. I laid down, at last, an old New York
"Herald," which the captain of the "Osprey" had given me
that morning, and which, in the hope of home-news, I had
read and read again to the last syllable of the
"Personals." I put down the paper as one always puts
down an American paper in a foreign land, saying to
myself, "Happy is that nation whose history is
unwritten." At that moment Sir Roger Tichborne, who had
been talking with an intelligent-looking American on the
other side of the table, stretched his giant form, and
said he believed he would play a game of billiards before
he went to bed. He left us alone; and the American
crossed the room, and addressed me.
"You are from Massachusetts, are you not?" said he.
I said I had lived in that State.
"Good State to come from," said he. "I was
there myself for three or four months,--four months
and ten days precisely. Did not like it very well; did
not like it. At least I liked it well enough: my wife
did not like it; she could not get acquainted.
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