and broken and unclean shirtfront.  Showy studs, of imitation gold—­they had made black disks on the linen.  Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation gold, the copper base showing through.  Ponderous watch-chain of imitation gold.  I judge that he couldn’t tell the time by it, for he asked Smythe what time it was, once.  He wore a coat which had been gay when it was young; 5-o’clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and marvelously soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather.  He was a novelty—­an imitation dude.  He would have been a real one if he could have afforded it.  But he was satisfied with himself.  You could see it in his expression, and in all his attitudes and movements.  He was living in a dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a sincerity.  It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements.  It was plain to me that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing everything the way he thought the Prince would do it.  For bringing his four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity —­just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world.  He stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose as the Prince and work his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he would indolently watch the blue films curling up from his cigarette, and inhale the stench, and look so grateful; and would flip the ash away with the daintiest gesture, unintentionally displaying his brass ring in the most intentional way; why, it was as good as being in Marlborough House itself to see him do it so like.

There was other scenery in the trip.  That of the Hawksbury river, in the National Park region, fine—­extraordinarily fine, with spacious views of stream and lake imposingly framed in woody hills; and every now and then the noblest groupings of mountains, and the most enchanting rearrangements of the water effects.  Further along, green flats, thinly covered with gum forests, with here and there the huts and cabins of small farmers engaged in raising children.  Still further along, arid stretches, lifeless and melancholy.  Then Newcastle, a rushing town, capital of the rich coal regions.  Approaching Scone, wide farming and grazing levels, with pretty frequent glimpses of a troublesome plant—­a particularly devilish little prickly pear, daily damned in the orisons of the agriculturist; imported by a lady of sentiment, and contributed gratis to the colony.  Blazing hot, all day.

December 20.  Back to Sydney.  Blazing hot again.  From the newspaper, and from the map, I have made a collection of curious names of Australasian towns, with the idea of making a poem out of them: