It is on the Block that people show off their new dresses, bow to their
friends, cut their enemies, and chatter small talk. The same thing no
doubt occurred in the Appian Way, the fashionable street of Imperial
Rome, when Catullus talked gay nonsense to Lesbia, and Horace received
the congratulations of his friends over his new volume of society
verses. History repeats itself, and every city is bound by all the laws
of civilisation to have one special street, wherein the votaries of
fashion can congregate.

Collins Street is not, of course, such a grand thoroughfare as those
above mentioned, but the people who stroll up and down the broad
pavement are quite as charmingly dressed, and as pleasant as any
of the peripatetics of those famous cities. As the sun brings out
bright flowers, so the seductive influence of the hot weather had
brought out all the ladies in gay dresses of innumerable colours, which
made the long street look like a restless rainbow.

Carriages were bowling smoothly along, their occupants smiling and
bowing as they recognised their friends on the side walk. Lawyers,
their legal quibbles finished for the week, were strolling leisurely
with their black bags in their hands; portly merchants, forgetting
Flinder's Lane and incoming ships, walked beside their pretty
daughters; and the representatives of swelldom were stalking along in
their customary apparel of curly brimmed hats, high collars, and
immaculate suits. Altogether, it was a pleasant and animated scene,
which would have delighted the heart of anyone who was not dyspeptic,
or in love--dyspeptic people and lovers (disappointed ones, of course)
being wont to survey the world in a cynical vein.

Madge Frettlby was engaged in that occupation so dear to every female