Q. notes his absence from writing his regular column in the previous two months (with some allusions to a term of imprisonment). He says he will keep 'the harrowing details' of his 'days of suffering for another opportunity'. (The Australian Dictionary of Biography states that Clarke was 'was seriously incapacitated by a fall from a horse' during the middle part of 1868, 'Clarke, Marcus Andrew Hislop').
Q. then turns his attention to political developments in Melbourne and to the manner of greeting friends and acquaintances in the street.