Ballarat."

"My native town, by Jove! Jump up."

I gave him my card. He looked at it and said, "When I was last in
Victoria I used to follow with much interest a curious walk across
Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne done by a namesake.
Any relation? The same man! I'm delighted to see you." Here then at the
most inland of the customs stations in China, 1500 miles from the sea,
I met my fellow countryman who was born near my home and whose father
was a well-known Mayor of Ballarat City.

Like myself he had formerly been a student of Melbourne University, but
I was many years his senior. What was his experience of the University I
forgot to inquire, but mine I remember vividly enough; for it was not
happy. In the examination for the Second-year Medicine, hoping the more
to impress the Professors, I entered my name for honours--and they
rejected me in the preliminary pass. It seems that in the examination in
Materia Medica, I had among other trifling lapses prescribed a dose of
Oleum Crotonis of "one half to two drachms _carefully increased_." I
confess that I had never heard of the wretched stuff; the question was
taken from far on in the text book and, unfortunately, my reading had
not extended quite so far. When a deputation from my family waited upon
the examiner to ascertain the cause of my misadventure, the only
satisfaction we got was the obliging assurance "that you might as well
let a mad dog loose in Collins Street" as allow me to become a doctor.
And then the examiner produced my prescription. But I thought I saw a
faint chance of escape. I pointed a nervous finger to the two words
"carefully increased," and pleaded that that indication of caution ought
to save me. "Save _you_ it might," he shouted with unnecessary
vehemence; "but, God bless my soul, man, it would not save your
patient." The examiner was a man intemperate of speech; so I left the
University. It was a severe blow to the University, but the University
survived it.

My countryman had been five years in China in the customs service, that
marvellous organisation which is more impartially open to all the world
than any other service in the world. As an example, I note that among
the Commissioners of Customs at the ports of the River Yangtse alone, at
the time of my voyage the Commissioner at Shanghai was an Austrian, at
Kiukiang a Frenchman, at Hankow an Englishman, at Ichang a Scandinavian,
and at Chungking a German.

The Aus