he could manage them well. But when both united against him the guttural and palatal requiring for their amalgamation, a quivering motion of the tongue, with its pressure against the roof of the mouth, and a depression of the under jaw, was a mouthful quite beyond his capacity. Therefore, when a magistrate would ask Sergeant Staunton what his charge was against a particular prisoner, he would give his lips a wipe and a screw, and would try to answer " H e was a lar—" the " k " caused him to stammer and draw breath, and in his plunging towards the far end of the word, he floundered between the " r " and the " k," and to enable him to reach the terminus, the " r " was duplicated and backed by an "i," a third syllable being so formed, which Staunton employed as a stepping-stone, and jumped across. T h e response therefore, took this form, " H e was a lar—ri—kin, your Worship," and so was coined a word n o w of c o m m o n use, which will yet be incorporated in the English language, like other slang expressions seemingly so necessary that one wonders h o w they could ever have been done without. But, though the designations are analogous as coming from the same shell, it would be a gross injustice to rank the ancient larkers with the modern larrikins as birds of a feather, for there was a wide divergence between the two classes in action, motive, and even temperament. Larrikinism is the outcome of various causes, climatic, dietary, defects in the educational bringing up, moral, religious, &c. In its indulgence it far exceeds the traditionary limits of the sky-larkers, and drifts into excesses of the most criminal kind, not unlike in some respects, the ruffianism of the Mohocks, with which the streets of London rang in the beginning of the 18th century. In all their m a d wild revels, their " Reckless days and reckless nights, Unholy songs, and tipsy fights,"
The larkers in old Melbourne would as soon think of cutting their own throats as robbing a man, and I have found no authenticated instance of their having offered insults to any w o m a n passed in the streets in their intoxicated raids. T h e old sky-larkers were drawn from the cream instead of the scum of society, the scions of families of good blood and reputation, w h o came to Australia in search of fortunes—gay sparks, some with light and few with heavy purses, the contents of which were sent flying in every direction. M a n y of them took up land in various parts of Port Phillip, commencing on the Plenty, and trending northwards along the rivers in the interior away to the Murray. F r o m this aggregation stood out prominently what was known as the " Goulburn Mob," dashing, gentlemanly, intellectual and good-looking fellows, w h o led a monotonous, industrious, life in the bush; but the m o m e n t they got a chance flocked to Melbourne, went the pace there in a manner conducive to the health of neither body nor pocket, enjoyed life while they could, then returned to the drudgery of station work, and so came and went until the " wild oats" were not only sown, but the crop reaped with a vengeance. S o m e of them, at the turn of the tide, settled d o w n quietly and amassed fortunes, afterwards enjoyed both in the colony and at h o m e ; but death m a d e sad havoc with many, for the best and the brightest and the gayest of the frolicsome scapegraces went d o w n before its remorseless scythe. T h e first head-quarters of what the newspapers were wont to designate the " Waterfordians" (after the m a d Marquis of Waterford), were established in 1839, at the Lamb Inn, the second hotel in Melbourne, an unpicturesque, ramshackle, straggling wood and brick batch of apartments, thrown together on the site of the present Scoffs Hotel, in Collins Street. For some reason or other, not knc vn to posterity, they passed under the title of " T h e Charcoal Boys." Possibly it was because of some association of ideas in the colour of charred wood, and the darkness under cover of which their escapades were indulged. T h e Lamb Inn was opposite the then Melbourne Club, which got into full swing in 1840, and this proximity afforded a favourable opportunity for uniting the several forces in the event of any combined m o v e m e n t ; for, be it written, not to their disadvantage, that the Waterfordians usually pulled well together; there was no splitting into factions, and, unless a row over the dining or card-table, and a hostile meeting ending in an abortion, no inter sc feuds ever existed. In a short time, the Club completely eclipsed the m a d doings of the Iamb, and in the course of a few years the Prince of Wales, in Little Flinders Street, was an occasional contributory; zz
