Wilson Brothers, whose stations are situated on
the Wimmera River, are the gentlemen most
liberally patronised, and, incredible as it may
seem, the average number of travellers
accommodated at each homestead every night during
the off season is nearer sixty than fifty, and as
many as ninety-two have been counted on a
single night at Longernong, the station of Mr.
John Wilson.

There is no doubt that in many cases these
recipients of charity could, with common care,
always be in a position to purchase food while
out of employment. A good bushman can earn
at piece-work from two pounds to three pounds
per week, clear of rations; and although the
work is not continuous, he can save enough for
his purpose. Some do so and marry, purchase
a few acres of ground, and start as "cockatoos,"
or carriers. Farming on a small scale, however,
does not appear to be very profitable, for many
of the farmers are to be seen "on the Wallaby"
looking for shearing at the proper time of year.
The station hands, men who are employed by
the week to do what is called "knock-about
work," usually receive fifteen shillings a week
and their board. Out of this a man can save
but very little, buying as he does his clothes,
tobacco, &c., from the hawkers who traverse
the country, and who charge somewhere about
cent per cent on town prices. The goods which
they usually carry are so inferior that the
unfortunate labourer in reality pays two hundred
per cent, as they so constantly require
renewing.

From whatever cause, however, the impecunious
state of the traveller may arise, whether
from improvidence or from misfortune, the facts
remain the same. There is a large number of
men constantly "on the Wallaby," and food and
shelter they must have; whether the squatter
is morally obliged to supply the want is a question
which I will not enter into. He does it;
but, I am bound to admit, he does it under
protest. Meetings have been held, at which the
subject has been freely discussed; and proposals
have been made to discontinue the practice
altogether, or to charge so much for the night's
accommodation.

Few squatters are willing to adopt the former
course, and the latter would, in most cases, be
unable to enforce their demands, for not one in
ten could produce the money. Some few settlers
expect the "callers" to chop a certain quantity
of wood, others to cut chaff; but these are
expedients adopted more for the purpose of seeing
the men, in order to guard against their coming
too often, than for anything else.

A few of these extra hands are at times
absorbed in government contracts, but the
number makes no sensible diminution in the infliction.

Now, there is not a doubt that there are
many loafers among these travelling bands who
will not work; but there are also many deserving
men who are willing and anxious to work,
and the squatters do not object to provide food
and shelter for the latter class. To draw a line
between the two, however, would be, it is
evident, next to impossible; so that, in order that
the industrious may not suffer, all must be fed.

The arrangements at the bush public-houses
may be pointed to as the leading cause of the
labouring classes being so improvident. ln
almost every case, the taproom is the only apartment
set aside for their accommodation. No
comfort of any description is provided for them;
their meals, of the coarsest, are generally served
to them in the kitchen; and any hole is supposed
to be good enough for them to sleep in, the
room set apart for a dormitory being supplied
with a few stretchers and blankets, and going
by the name of "the lushington's crib," or
"the dead-house."

Every inducement is held out to them to
drink; none whatever to keep sober and
respectable. Few resist the temptation; and
when once they reach the proper stage of
intoxication, as long as the money lasts they are
kept drunk.

So much is this habit of "knocking down"
the hard-earned cheque the rule and not the
exception, that I once heard a wealthy squatter,
himself a justice of the peace, say that it was a
pity there was no public-house in the neighbourhood,
and that one must be started as soon as
possible to keep the labour in the district.

This was in a newly occupied part of the
interior, where men were scarce and wages high,
the nearest inn being about three hundred miles
distant.

To sum the matter up, there are hundreds of
men "on the Wallaby" during several months
of the year for whom there is no employment,
and they are wholly dependent upon the
"grazier" for food and shelter.

The practice is as unpleasant to the "traveller"
as it is unprofitable for the " squatter."
Can any one suggest a remedy?

     ROMANCE OF THE DIAMOND
                    NECKLACE.

CHAPTER I.

THE story of the Diamond Necklace, or the
"Affaire du Collier," as it is termed in the
jurisprudence of the time, has been told scores
of times by historians, biographers, memoir-
writers, novelists, dramatists, and essayists, in
almost every European language. We propose
to bring forward some new passages in this
singular history, and to interweave them with
the facts already known.

About a century ago, the Marchioness de
Boulainvilliers, a beauty of the court of Louis
the Fifteenth, and who married the grandson of
Simon Bernard, the famous Hebrew banker,
was driving one afternoon over to Passy, when
a ragged little girl, with a younger girl
strapped like a bundle of rags to her back, and
with a ragged little urchin trotting by her side,
ran after the carriage, and appealed for charity
in this strange language:

"Kind lady, pray take pity on three poor