}was drowned while trying to rescue cows belonging to the Convent of Merey, and the Sydney to Melbourne ust loaded the first wheat shipment on, a small parcel for Yokohama, sor trucks on the rail for the port of Melbourne, is the rinton Court loaded for the Such first. shi struggling on now, when normal seasons it would be over in all but the very latest cool districts. torrents with further heavy' rains Tre following up of the first has resulted in crops which were cut in the beginning of the month only being carted in to the stack this, mas, week. Some farmers will work on. the. festive day if only the fair weather lets. them continue work. Then lucerne: will be ready for a. second cutting in some areas which may re-Jcompense some men. Graziers and pastoralists are better off as their Rirst loss is their last loss, where they have experienced flooded homes, drowned stock, damage to fences, stockyards, sheds and 50 forth." In their case the loss of fodder stacks has been or will be replaced by prolific growth of grass, Central Australia had its share. of the rains the edge of the depression lets to Alice the lake district of "is a country which responds rapidly to plentiful Dormant plant. growth ily springing up, and insect life reanimating, while deeps of mud holes bring forth frogs" in a miraculous. fashion "at which Fnaturalists and geologists marvel Over 1,100: electric communication: Fines had to be repaired to restore connections between Victorian towns. fand main lines with South Australia and New South Wales. young Chinese who still have an intimate knowledge of the: old poets of this country. Staying in the same inn was an old scholar, somewhat down on hi luck. His pastime was with' a strange, flat, stringed instrument on his lap and pick out notes and cadences upon it, his lips moving the while. It can hardly be said that he was playing music, The sound resembled more closely the peculiar lilt which used to be heard in an old Chinese school, where the pupils rope:
their lessons aloud. TI companion was interested in this scholar, and used to sit opposite to him'and provide the words for the music. It proved to be tone of the most difficult and learned feats in. the Chinese language, since the old scholar was playing the poems of ancient times, and his young companion had to have such a knowledge of the classics that he could tell, from the sequence of the seven tones, which poem was being played. He was often at fault and the old man would have to correct him, The two would conduct their duet until all hours, and it would be a bold man who would say that the Hleasure they seemed to derive from it was anything but intellectual. It was typical of the quaint puzzles, proverbs, and riddles which delight the erudite Chinese mind, Most of the prejudice agi Chinese music has arisen fr the instruments which are used. No one who has only heard the excruciating screeches produced on the native fiddle by the peddler of those instruments in the street can fall to have been horrified and startled, But these peddled tortures bear as much relation to the real instrument as the banjo to the Cremona violin. A large native fiddle in the hands of an-expert produces a bell-like note of exe tra ordinarily rich quality. The player's fingers rest lightly on the strings, the pressure bow is applied with an of the which has to be study believed, and the result is a vibrant, resonant sound which the violin can only produce when in the hands of a genius like Kreisler. This fact, however, does not mitigate the offence of the cheap instrument. It is the cheap instrument which is, the most popular. It is the little bumbee tube which emits echoes like the scratching of glost fairist metal which is heard apparently enjoyed through the length and breadth of the land. For the foreigner to sit at a banquet with some flowery lady of melody who rejoices in the name of Little Melon Seed standing or sitting just behind him and lifting up her voice in accompaniment with such painful sounds from the fiddler is experience never to be for= gotten. For there seems to be something infectious in the strains of the instrument, something which creeps into the voice of the singer so that her in like molten metal into wax. Foreigners have no refuge but brandy or bird's and the latter are poor consolation.
No wonder then that the average foreigner is apt to treat with scepticism amounting almost to violence the claim that such music has greater beauties than that of the best of the western masters. It is probably. all that he hears of the melody of the land. That or the almost equally' terrible banging upon a lump of wood, the Pa Kua. The description is admittedly: crude, but it is difficult to find any other way of referring: to what is done. The instrument is heard more frequently in the Chinese theatre than in the restaurant, but it often ac~ companies the voice of the singer
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.