ocent and Santa Claus was real. At times you thought
you were very wicked, but you never realize how innocent you were until
you've grown up and knocked about the world.

Let me think!

Christmas in an English village, with bare hedges and trees, and
leaden skies that lie heavy on our souls as we walk, with overcoat and
umbrella, sons of English exiles and exiles in England, and think of
bright skies and suns overhead, and sweeps of country disappearing into
the haze, and blue mountain ranges melting into the azure of distant
lower skies, and curves of white and yellow sand beaches, and runs of
shelving yellow sandstone sea-walls--and the glorious Pacific! Sydney
Harbour at sunrise, and the girls we took to Manly Beach.

Christmas in a London flat. Gloom and slush and soot. It is not the
cold that affects us Australians so much, but the horrible gloom. We get
heart-sick for the sun.

Christmas at sea--three Christmases, in fact--one going saloon from
Sydney to Westralia early in the Golden Nineties with funds; and one,
the Christmas after next, coming back steerage with nothing but the
clothes we'd slept in. All of which was bad judgment on our part--the
order and manner of our going and coming should have been reversed.

Christmas in a hessian tent in "th' Westren," with so many old mates
from the East that it was just old times over again. We had five pounds
of corned beef and a kerosene-tin to boil it in; and while we were
talking of old things the skeleton of a kangaroo-dog grabbed the beef
out of the boiling water and disappeared into the scrub--which made it
seem more like old times than ever.

Christmas going to New Zealand, with experience, by the s.s. _Tasmania_.
We had plum duff, but it was too "soggy" for us to eat. We dropped it
overboard, lest it should swamp the boat--and it sank to the ooze. The
Tasmania was saved on that occasion, but she foundered next year outside
Gisborne. Perhaps the cook had made more duff. There was a letter from a
sweetheart of mine amongst her mails when she went down; but that's got
nothing to do with it, though it made some difference in my life.

Christmas on a new telegraph line with a party of lining gangmen in
New Zealand. There was no duff nor roast because there was no firewood
within twenty miles. The cook used to pile armfuls of flax-sticks under
the billies, and set light to them when the last man arrived in camp.

Christmas in Sydney, with a dozen invitations