A STORY OF AUSTRALIAN LIFE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume I, Issue 40, 16 September 1863, Page 6

A STORY OF AUSTRALIAN LIFE.

(From the Times' Melbourne Correspondent.) Principally because romantic notions are sometimes formed by gentlefolks in England as to the free, unconstrained, and therefore happy country life of ladies and gentlemen in a colony, I lately noted a case in the bush, rather rare, and, as I think, interesting. Returning to the township of a Victorian watering-place on a Sunday night after a long stroll in the country, I heard coming up behind me at a trot about thirty head of cattle. I observed, as they approached, that they were all milch cows, and that a sort of gentleman in his shirt sleeves, and well mounted, kept them together on the one side, and a woman, also on horseback, was rounding them up on the other side. As she galloped alter some errant animal, her habit gracefully flying behind her, and her seat (as she jumped ljgs and little creeks) sale andjassured from long practice, she ljoked like Die Vernon turned useful; and any one would have pronounced her a lady, and an elegant lady too, had she not been driving cattle, which to my prejudiced eye rather complicated, her personal appearance with a touch of Smithfield. The whole group swept by, and in a minute or so were lost sight of in the hush. Early on the next morning I was walking through the little township before breakfast, when I saw a miik cart with the most modern style of shining tin pails in it, standing at a door, a man servLg the milk, while a woman sat in the cart handling the reins. As they drove off I had a dim recollection of having seen them before, but where or under what circumstances I could not call to mind. I described to my old Scotch landlord what I had seen as above described, and at once he told me what he and all his neighbors evidently regaided as one of the most romantic little stories of which the neighborhood could boast.

The pair of equestrians in the bush and the pair in the milk cart were, it seems, one and the same pair. The doctor in the township had discovered all about them. When young and poor they had married in England despite the opposition of friends. The gentleman had been in the n ivy; the lady had been delicately nurtured. Soon after marriage they resolved to begin the world afresh. They arrived in Victoria very poor. Mr. D——, the husband, nearly related to a noble family in England, nevertheless, with honorable streugth of will worked hard with his hands, and his delicate young wife was a devoted and self-denying partner in his hardships. He put by a little money, and bought a few head of stock. And now Mr. 13 declares that he is as happy as the day is long, and that he would not exchange his position for the command of the best ship in her Majesty's navy. They have three children, pronounced to be winders of pre.ty behaviour and good training, and the father aud mother (iay the gossips), after nine

years of married life, " speak to each other more like lovers than like man and wife." Together tluy round up the cattle of an evening, and together they serve the milk in the morning. In the evening, after the " kye " are in, she solaces herself and little circle with the piano, and gives an hour or so to the education of her little ones. But it is said that she is not altogether as contented as her lord. "Why ?" said I, deeply interested in this little romance of real life. After many questions and many answers, here is the outcome of the cross-examination of various witnesses. At the bottom of the lady's rural felicity is a something which poisons it somewhat—human pude. She is often addressed as a common milkwoman, when she knows she i 3 not a common milkwoman and she shrinks from the vulgar but extremely natural mistake. A woman who serves milk, were she a Princess in disguise, is still a milkwoman to the eyes of the fl-sh; and suppressed accomplishments can hardly secure recognition. Such a life then, after all, is a mistake. 1 hey are a misfit in the social scheme. They may say, and try to believe, that they are thoroughly happy, but, not associating with those with whom they are fit to associate, and holding aloof from the ignorant and the vulgar, they are in effect almost without society. The troubled, pride therefore of Mrs. "I) " i s , after all, only the involuntarly expressed consciousness of the unappreciated lady. She is playing a part in the nndst of serious life, and is perhaps unreasonably indignant that that life dees not more applaud the little drama and admire the milkwoman and the lady so gracefully rolled into one. It is difficult to write so hard against this custom-bound world and yet receive no smart from the process.