He laid foundation stones. He
took the chair at public meetings. In fact, he had his finger in
every public pie likely to bring him into notoriety; but not in
private pies, oh, dear, no; he never did good by stealth and blush
to find it fame. Any blushes he might have had would have been angry
ones at his good deed not being known.
He had come in the early days of the colony, and made a lot of
money, being a shrewd man, and one who took advantage of every tide
in the affairs of men. He was honest, that is honest as our present
elastic acceptation of the word goes--and when he had accumulated a
fortune he set to work to buy a few things. He bought a grand house
at Toorak, then he bought a wife to do the honours of the grand
house, and when his domestic affairs were quite settled, he bought
popularity, which is about the cheapest thing anyone can buy. When
the Society for the Supplying of Aborigines with White Waistcoats
was started he headed the list with one thousand pounds--bravo,
Meddlechip! The Secretary of the Band of Hard-up Matrons asked him
for fifty pounds, and got five hundred--generous Meddlechip! And at
the meeting of the Society for the Suppression of Vice among Married
Men he gave two thousand pounds, and made a speech on the occasion,
which made all the married men present tremble lest their sins
should find them out-noble Meddlechip! He would give thousands away
in public charity, have it well advertised in the newspapers, and
then wonder, with humility, how the information got there; and he
would give a poor woman in charge for asking for a penny, on the
ground that she was a vagrant.
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