Chapter 16 - Page 2

the people dance all night so as to be fresh for the race in the morning.
And at the end of the great week the swarms secure lodgings and
transportation for next year, then flock away to their remote homes and
count their gains and losses, and order next year's Cup-clothes, and then
lie down and sleep two weeks, and get up sorry to reflect that a whole
year must be put in somehow or other before they can be wholly happy
again.

The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be
difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays
and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies.
Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out. Each of them
gets attention, but not everybody's; each of them evokes interest, but
not everybody's; each of them rouses enthusiasm, but not everybody's; in
each case a part of the attention, interest, and enthusiasm is a matter
of habit and custom, and another part of it is official and perfunctory.
Cup Day, and Cup Day only, commands an attention, an interest, and an
enthusiasm which are universal--and spontaneous, not perfunctory. Cup
Day is supreme it has no rival. I can call to mind no specialized annual
day, in any country, which can be named by that large name--Supreme. I
can call to mind no specialized annual day, in any country, whose
approach fires the whole land with a conflagration of conversation and
preparation and anticipation and jubilation. No day save this one; but
this one does it.

In America we have no annual supreme day; no day whose approach makes the
whole nation glad. We have the Fourth of July, and Christmas, and
Thanksgiving. Neither of them can claim the primacy; neither of them can
arouse an enthusiasm which comes near to being universal. Eight grown
Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium
and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone--if still alive. The
approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent
people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know
what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard
and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so
dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit
down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a
year. The observance of Thanksgiving Day--as a function--has become
general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is
natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard
time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their
enthusiasm.

We have a supreme day--a sweeping and tremendous and tumultuous day, a
day which commands an absolute