mercer of London, who served the office of Lord Mayor three times, the last time in 1419." "John Thomas" never left Melbourne to be chimed back by the church bells, promising him future greatness; and, though charitable and church-going in his way, he never founded almshouses or colleges. Born at Sydney in 1816, John Thomas Smith arrived, a youth, in Melbourne, and became assistant teacher at the Church of England Aboriginal Missionary School, established in 1837, on a portion of the now Botanical Gardens. After clerking for some time in the employment of Mr. John Hodgson he went into business, and kept a store and woodyard in Collins Street, near the centre of the present "Block." He next betook himself to the keeping of public-houses in Little Flinders and Queen Streets, known as the Adelphi, and St. John's Tavern. He built a theatre, gradually acquired much property, and was what might be termed a monied man. He was the first schoolmaster in Melbourne, and at an early period was associated with Freemasonry, and reached the highest official position in that Fraternity. With the exception of an interval of a few months, he remained connected with the City Council to the time of his death in 1878, at which period he was "Father" of the Corporation and the Legislative Assembly, as the senior member of both. For a brief term he held the portfolio of Minister of Mines. In one respect Mr. Smith out-did Sir Richard Whittington, for he was elected Mayor of Melbourne seven times; and as President of the City Council, and Police Magistrate of Melbourne, he brought to the performance of what were sometimes very onerous duties, an amount of shrewdness, energy, and strong common sense, certainly not surpassed by any man who ever held the same positions. None of the early Mayors spent so much money in charitable purposes, private and public; and there were some years when the calls on Mayor Smith's benevolence were numerous and pressing. Sir Richard Whittington's name is handed down to us with a legendary cat in his train, but Mr. John Thomas Smith has associated with his name one of the first veritable British-born asses that brayed in the colony. In 1858, as Mayor of Melbourne, he was delegated by the City Council to present an Address to the Queen on the occasion of the marriage of the Princess Royal, and, accordingly, he sped away to London, big with hope of returning with a Patent of Knighthood in his pocket. In this he was disappointed; but he was accompanied by an assinine shipmate, whose presence was so familiarized in the public mind that no play-wright would, up to Smith's death, venture to place on the Melbourne stage a Christmas pantomime without a reserved place in it for "John Thomas's donkey."
This exhausts the list of Mayors with whom I have to deal. It was said that one of them had much difficulty in mastering the orthography of "City," and that another, who had a seat in Parliament, had such a horror of trying to spell the word, that he always revenged himself by knocking an "eye out of it;" but there was a modern Mayor in the Lower House, who was so economical of his ss's, that he could never afford more than one of them when spelling "Assembly;" yet by an amusing extravagance he always gave more than one "leg" to the Upper House, which he invariably wrote "Leg 's' islative Council." A certain modern Mayor once took it into his wise head to submit it to a course of private tuition for the acquisition of French and Latin phrases. Singular to say, with the "parlez vous" he got on moderately well, but the Roman classics were to him impenetrable. In the two well-known phrases, "a priori" and "a posteriori," he found a Scylla and a Charybdis, only that instead of steering safely between two dangers, or getting swamped by one of them, he became enmeshed in both. His tongue could never grapple with the pronunciation, though so much easier than the Parisian; and causes and effect were, with him, convertible terms. Besides, he had an unalterable conviction that "a priori" meant his "ancestors "—those who went before him; and "a posteriori" his "posterity;" and his free translation of both phrases was "from father to son."
Considering the convivial usages of the era in which they reigned, the old Mayors were a comparatively steady set of men. At public entertainments there was much more "business" done in the drinking line than now, and one of them might occasionally become "slightly elevated." Once a Civic chief when the serious part of a public dinner was over, and a "free-and-easiness" set in, jumped upon the table, and treated the remnant of the company to a few turns of a Highland Fling; but it will hardly be contended that this was as excessive a post-prandial feat as travelling homeward in the "wee sma' hours," through the public streets, in the van of a saveloy engine. And now for a few remarks (currente calamo) anent
