It was through Mr. Blank—­not to go into particulars about his name—­it was mainly through Mr. Blank that my stay in Bendigo was made memorably pleasant and interesting.  He explained this to me himself.  He told me that it was through his influence that the city government invited me to the town-hall to hear complimentary speeches and respond to them; that it was through his influence that I had been taken on a long pleasure-drive through the city and shown its notable features; that it was through his influence that I was invited to visit the great mines; that it was through his influence that I was taken to the hospital and allowed to see the convalescent Chinaman who had been attacked at midnight in his lonely hut eight weeks before by robbers, and stabbed forty-six times and scalped besides; that it was through his influence that when I arrived this awful spectacle of piecings and patchings and bandagings was sitting up in his cot letting on to read one of my books; that it was through his influence that efforts had been made to get the Catholic Archbishop of Bendigo to invite me to dinner; that it was through his influence that efforts had been made to get the Anglican Bishop of Bendigo to ask me to supper; that it was through his influence that the dean of the editorial fraternity had driven me through the woodsy outlying country and shown me, from the summit of Lone Tree Hill, the mightiest and loveliest expanse of forest-clad mountain and valley that I had seen in all Australia.  And when he asked me what had most impressed me in Bendigo and I answered and said it was the taste and the public spirit which had adorned the streets with 105 miles of shade trees, he said that it was through his influence that it had been done.

But I am not representing him quite correctly.  He did not say it was through his influence that all these things had happened—­for that would have been coarse; be merely conveyed that idea; conveyed it so subtly that I only caught it fleetingly, as one catches vagrant faint breaths of perfume when one traverses the meadows in summer; conveyed it without offense and without any suggestion of egoism or ostentation—­but conveyed it, nevertheless.

He was an Irishman; an educated gentleman; grave, and kindly, and courteous; a bachelor, and about forty-five or possibly fifty years old, apparently.  He called upon me at the hotel, and it was there that we had this talk.  He made me like him, and did it without trouble.  This was partly through his winning and gentle ways, but mainly through the amazing familiarity with my books which his conversation showed.  He was down to date with them, too; and if he had made them the study of his life he could hardly have been better posted as to their contents than he was.  He made me better satisfied with myself than I had ever been before.  It was plain that he had a deep fondness for humor, yet he never laughed; he never even chuckled; in fact, humor could not win to outward expression on his face at all.  No, he was always grave—­tenderly, pensively grave; but he made me laugh, all along; and this was very trying—­and very pleasant at the same time—­for it was at quotations from my own books.