have another idea in their heads." I winced under the rebuke, but accepted it, as became our relative ages. None the less did I bear in my secret breast that Arab-like love for horses and their belongings which marks the predestined son of the Waste here as duly as in Yemen or the Nejd.
How I longed for the day when I should have a station of my own, when I should have blood mares, colts and fillies, perhaps a horse in training, with all the gorgeous adjuncts of stud-proprietorship! The time came—the horses too—many a deeply joyous hour, many a thrill of hope and fear, many a wild ride and daring deed was mine
Ere nerve and sinew began to fail
In the consulship of Plancus.
And now the time has passed. The good horses have trotted, and cantered, and galloped away from out my life; most of them from this fair earth altogether. Yet still, memory clings with curious fidelity to the equine friends of the good old time, indissolubly connected as they were with more important personages and events.
Among the earliest blood sires that the district around Melbourne boasted were "Clifton" and "Traveller"—both New South Wales bred horses, and destined to spend their last years in the same stud. Of this pair of thoroughbreds, Clifton, a son of Skeleton and Spaewife, both imported, was bred by the late Mr. Charles Smith, and named Clifton after his stud farm near Sydney. "Skeleton," a grey horse of high lineage, own brother to "Drone," and the property of the Marquis of Sligo, was imported by
