It cannot be helped if, in one's sketches of some Australian notabilities, one rouses to fury the whole cry of the Anglo-Australians.

The choice of several of these personages will be impugned; the effort to portray them frankly and unaffectedly will be impugned still more.

Servile sheep millionaires, who realised their fortunes in days utterly unlike the present, and are spending the proceeds of them in the agonising effort to storm the gates of London “society”, may have been Australian men of mark once, but they are so no longer.

When a butcher in a little Queensland seaport carries through his claims, after a struggle as severe as it was protracted, to the lion's share of the richest gold-mine in the world—enters, an untried man, into a powerful ministry—shows himself the worthy antagonist of the strongest politician in Australia—expels that politician from the leadership of the party which he had created—grasps the Treasury—administers it admirably, and is only hurled from office by an unscrupulous Coalition (and all this done in the most characteristically simple Australian temper and style)—then we have a millionaire who is certainly a man of mark, and utterly unknown though he is (one could almost say out of Queensland), he is surely worthy some attention.

The really interesting people are those who are influential, or will be influential, or ought to be influential.

Those who have perchance once been so, but are so no longer, and are never likely to be so again, are on a lower plane.