Nursery tea is more an English institution than an Australian one there is a kind of bon camaraderie feeling between parents and young folks here, and an utter absence of veneration on the part of the latter. They are having nursery tea at the present moment with a minimum of comfort and a maximum of noise, so if you can bear a deafening babel of voices and an unmusical clitter-clatter of crockery I will take you inside the room and introduce them to you. Let me tell you about my seven select spirits. But when it survives play-days and school-days, circumstances alone determine whether the electric sparkle shall go to play will-o'-the-wisp with the larrikin type, or warm the breasts of the spirited, single-hearted, loyal ones who alone can 'advance Australia.'Įnough of such talk. Often the light grows dull and the bright colouring fades to neutral tints in the dust and heat of the day. There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief in nature here, and therefore in children. It may be that the land and the people are young-hearted together, and the children's spirits not crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years' sorrowful history.

It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy of our atmosphere. In England, and America, and Africa, and Asia, the little folks may be paragons of virtue, I know little about them.īut in Australia a model child is-I say it not without thankfulness-an unknown quantity. Not one of the seven is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are. If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with perhaps a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay down the book immediately and betake yourself to Sandford and Merton or similar standard juvenile works.

B efore you fairly start this story I should like to give you just a word of warning.

The seven little australians