THE DAY AFTER.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 12615, 18 November 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DAY AFTER.

The greatest day of the whole year im Melbourne of "course 1 is •Melbo_rne Cup day, but the day- which is/consecrated to the annual Henley-onrYarra rims ii very close in the public, estimation. The I regatta and the acobmpanying festivities occupy the whole afternoon and; the early hours of the night, and Henley attracts almost as cosmopolitan a gathering as^the enormous multitude which once at least. iri every twelve months makes a pilgrimage to Flomington. Naturally the thousands of people who 101l about for hours on the banks of th* Yarra lost innumerable articles. Furs, feathers/ gloves, brooches, bangles and the hundred and one other ornaments with which the holiday-makers adorn themselves are dropped unnoticed, and when it is time to go home and th* losses are discovered„the gathering darkness precludes a search. Those who have lost anything of value can only make up their minds to look for it in the morning, and then their chance of finding it is small. At dawn on the day after the regatta the banks of the river are occupied again by an eager crowd, but few of its members are clothed iri. holiday attire. The Argus says that on the morning after the great gathering held a fortnight ago the second crowd commenced to assemble as soon as it - was light enough to-, see. The whole army of Melbourne's 'dossers,' male and female, (concentrated along the banks. In old, dirty clothes, broken boots, hats, many of which had been obviously res-* cued from some generous dust heap, unshaven, unwashed, they wandered slowly along, armed with sticks,' with which they ferreted about among the rubbish which strewed both banks of the river. They were the bankcombers, the seekera after the little things the .crowd of Saturday night had left bohind them." "f|or hours the searches applied themselves to their strange task. Every paper bag-; every broken chocolate box was turned over and opened, and every nook and corner of the open spaces within reach of the river was subrnitted to the most painstaking. • investigation. , Probably' many, of the searchers we're rewarded amply for their unusual industrv.