The lion smoking the cigar became a signal to his friends that Marcus was within.
Illustration to ‘Marcus Clarke’ in Hugh McCrae's Story-book Only, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1948. In Hugh's boyhood George Gordon McCrae, a friend of Clarke's, used to point out to his son the lion on the approach to the Melbourne Public Library where Clarke reputedly left an unfinished cigar as a signal to his friends that he was at his post in the library.
