onor and credit. It has one
specialty; this must not be jumbled in with those other things. It is
the mitred Metropolitan of the Horse-Racing Cult. Its race-ground is the
Mecca of Australasia. On the great annual day of sacrifice--the 5th of
November, Guy Fawkes's Day--business is suspended over a stretch of land
and sea as wide as from New York to San Francisco, and deeper than from
the northern lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; and every man and woman, of
high degree or low, who can afford the expense, put away their other
duties and come. They begin to swarm in by ship and rail a fortnight
before the day, and they swarm thicker and thicker day after day, until
all the vehicles of transportation are taxed to their uttermost to meet
the demands of the occasion, and all hotels and lodgings are bulging
outward because of the pressure from within. They come a hundred
thousand strong, as all the best authorities say, and they pack the
spacious grounds and grandstands and make a spectacle such as is never to
be seen in Australasia elsewhere.

It is the "Melbourne Cup" that brings this multitude together. Their
clothes have been ordered long ago, at unlimited cost, and without bounds
as to beauty and magnificence, and have been kept in concealment until
now, for unto this day are they consecrate. I am speaking of the ladies'
clothes; but one might know that.

And so the grand-stands make a brilliant and wonderful spectacle, a
delirium of color, a vision of beauty. The champagne flows, everybody is
vivacious, excited, happy; everybody bets, and gloves and fortunes change
hands right along, all the time. Day after day the races go on, and the
fun and the excitement are kept at white heat; and when each day is done,
the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning.
And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and
transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and
count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then
lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole
year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy
again.

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be
difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays
and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.
Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them
gets a