The subject is perhaps too wide for the passing traveller, but you can hardly avoid the impression, that parental discipline is lax. You hear various explanations. Parents are too busy; or they themselves have had a hard time and would like their children to enjoy themselves; or finally, the children won't obey. The school system, which is generally though not universally popular, is "free, secular, and compulsory." Many regret the absence of the religious element; but, they say, the children had to be taught, and we could not wait till the Churches had agreed as to the form in which religious instruction should be given. All attempts at such agreement have hitherto broken down. The Roman Catholics especially object to the system, and when they can afford it sometimes establish schools of their own, and anathematise the parents who send their children to the national schools; but their people do not much sympathise with this objection, and, in fact, many of the teachers in the anathematised schools are Roman Catholics. We may well sympathise with the apprehensions felt by them and other thinking Australians on the subject; and looking nearer home, and reflecting on the number and character of the present generation of London "roughs," and on the fact that they must have all or nearly all passed through the refining ordeal of the board schools, we must admit that as yet this much-vaunted system of ours non emollivit mores.
On the question of drink, the general testimony is that though there is still too much of it, the practice of indiscriminate drinking is far less common than formerly. The sons of the older generation, which acquired the habit during a life of greater roughness and privation, do not keep it up. It is no longer de rigueur to accept the offered "refreshment," – at all events, in pretty rough society I found one never gave serious offence by declining it. And yet the taking offence is not so absolutely irrational as it may seem, for the offer is simply meant as one of courtesy and good-fellowship, to refuse which appears abstractedly discourteous. A very happy recent innovation allows you, when asked, "What will you take?" to say, "I will take a cigar," which of course you can throw away unperceived – if it is a bad one – after the first few whiffs. Driving across country one day with a very intelligent companion who had delivered himself of much good sense on the subject, we came to a roadside public, when he, recognising five of his friends standing about, handed me the reins, got down and went inside with them, rejoining me in a couple of minutes. As we drove off he said, "Well, that cost me half-a-crown." He had felt bound, according to custom, to "shout" for them all. I said, "But why do you give in to the practice?" He replied, "It is not for the drink that we care, but for the expression of friendly feeling. If any one would invent a less stupid way of expressing this, we should all be much obliged to him." This reminds one of the dialogue in 'Punch': "My dear fellow, I am very sorry for you, but why did you propose to her?" "Aw, well, you see, I had danced with her three times, and could think of nothing else to say." Certainly it seems hardly worth while to destroy the coats of your stomach out of mere civility. A pigeon-match was going on in the little township we had passed, and some fifty men were present,
