Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/377

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MY SCHOOL DAYS
365

amusements connected therewith. It must have been nearly as cold a day as last Monday week. There was snow on all the hills around Albury, but I did not hear of any snowballing quite so near Sydney as I refer to. If the Messrs. Chaffey Brothers succeed in their irrigation scheme, and make the Mildura salt-bush wilderness to bloom as the rose, we may attain partial security from droughts at least. Nevertheless let us pray to be delivered from the legendary visitations which grey-headed aboriginals have described to pioneer settlers. Such an one, unbroken for seven years, is now laying waste Queensland.

The sons of Sir Thomas Mitchell—Livingstone, Roderick, and Murray—were among the denizens of that old enclosure of learning, where, as Hood so truly sings—

Ay! there's the playground—there's the lime,
Beneath whose shade in summer's prime
So wildly I have read!
Who sits there now and skims the cream
Of young romance and weaves a dream
Of love and cottage bread?

Who, indeed! and how few are left of all that joyous crew that ran and leaped, shouted and whooped with the delight of abounding animal spirits? Besides the Mitchells were the sons of Colonel Snodgrass; the Bowlings, the present worthy judge and his brother Vincent; the Ritchies; the Nortons, James and John; George Wigram Allen; the Mannings, Arthur and Henry. These with others might be considered the aristocratic section, but there were no divisions founded upon social inequalities. We learned and fed, played and lived generally, in generous and hearty fellowship.

William Wentworth the younger, who afterwards distinguished himself at Cambridge, but died early, was intellectually a loss to his native land of no trifling extent.

John Lang, whose name to this day is well remembered in the Madras Presidency, was a Sydney College boy. Known to be clever, no one was surprised to hear that he distinguished himself at Cambridge, and passed as a barrister with credit. He made a short visit to Sydney afterwards, where, politically, he followed the banner of Mr. Wentworth. But he preferred to quit Australia for the exciting life and larger fees with which Indian barristers are credited. There, thanks to an unusual