Labours and honours opened at once. The day of my arrival I was to be
the guest of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce for the honour of a
dinner to their first President. My friend Mr. Cowderoy, the secretary,
had telegraphed me to Hobart, in the hope that I might arrive in time to
secure the dinner taking place prior to the Exhibition opening, with all
its proposed engrossing after festivities. Mr. Robert Reid, whose
acquaintance I had made at the grand Colonial Exhibition two years
before, was now President of the Chamber, and received me most
cordially. For the following day again there was the opening of the
Exhibition, at which I was to march in the procession through the Avenue
of Nations alongside of Mr. Francis Henty, now the sole survivor of the
illustrious brotherhood who founded Victoria fifty-four years before.
So far from anticipating such honours, I had been preparing myself to
plead, on any public occasion that might offer, the cause of the early
pioneers; for although, as I proposed to put it, we were but the babes,
and have since been succeeded by the men, we were surely to count for
something, as without the baby there could never have been the man. But
all fears on that head were promptly dispersed, and at every turn
honours were poured out upon the "old pioneers" of the days of small
things. I had repeatedly to confess, for myself as one of them, that it
was a most pleasant and fortunate ACCIDENT to have been an early
colonist.
But one disadvantage of these honours and attentions is that they are
apt to excite the envy of your fellow-mortals. Human nature, even the
very best, can never be perfect. My old friend James Stewart Johnston
challenged my right to appear in the grand procession, where he and a
good half-dozen other "old colonists" had equal rights. I replied
soothingly, regretting that so glorious a band of early warriors, who
had borne nobly all the rough battle of early progress (how eloquent
people can be in their own praise!) should not have been super-added to
honour and adorn the procession. But this not satisfying him, I was
driven to bay, and fired my reserved shot, to the effect that I was the
only old colonist who had come twelve thousand miles on purpose to
attend the opening. That shut him up.