which the weakening opposition was quashed by the singing
of: "When Johnny comes marching home!" and "Cheer, boys, cheer, For
home and mother country!"--an incongruity of sentiment that made Mahony
smile. And John, having repeatedly bowed his thanks from side to side,
joined in and sang with the rest.

The opening of his speech was inaudible to Mahony. Just behind him
stood one of his brother-in-law's most arrant opponents, a butcher by
trade, and directly John began to hold forth this man produced a
cornet-a-piston and started to blow it. In vain did Mahony expostulate:
he seemed to have got into a very wasps'-nest of hostility; for the
player's friends took up the cudgels and baited him in a language he
would have been sorry to imitate, the butcher blaring away unmoved,
with the fierce solemnity of face the cornet demands. Mahony lost his
temper; his tormentors retaliated; and for a moment it looked as though
there would be trouble. Then a number of John's supporters, enraged by
the bellowing of the instrument, bore down and forcibly removed the
musician and his clique, Mahony along with them.

Having indignantly explained, and shaken coat and collar to rights, he
returned to his place on the edge of the crowd. The speaker's deep
voice had gone steadily on during the disturbance. Indeed John might
have been born to the hustings. Interruptions did not put him out; he
was brilliant at repartee; and all the stock gestures of the public
speaker came at his call: the pounding of the bowl of one hand with the
closed fist of the other; the dramatic wave of the arm with which he
plumbed the depths or invited defiance; the jaunty standing-at-ease,
arms akimbo; the earnest bend from the waist when he took his hearers
into his confidence. At this moment he was gripping the rail of the
platform as though he intended to vault it, and asserting: "Our first
cry, then, is for men to people the country; our next, for
independence, to work out our own salvation. Yes, my friends, the
glorious future of this young and prosperous colony, which was once and
most auspiciously known as Australia Felix--blest, thrice-blest
Australia!--rests with ourselves alone. We who inhabit here can best
judge of her requirements, and we refuse to see her hampered in her
progress by the shackles of an ancient tradition. What suits our hoary
mother-country--God bless and keep her and keep us loyal to her!--is
but dry husks for us. England knows nothing of