When the development of the Moonta Mine made some of my friends rich they were also liberal. Edward Stirling said that if I wanted a trip to England I should have it at his cost, but it seemed impossible. After the death of Mr. Wren my mother and I went to live with my sister, and put two small incomes together, so as to be able to bring up and educate her two children, a boy and a girl. My brother John had left the railway, and for nine years had been Official Assignee and Curator of Intestate Estates; and in 1863 he had been appointed manager of the new Adelaide branch of the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank. My friend, Mr. Taylor, had helped well to get the position for one he thought the fittest man in the city. He had lost his wife, Miss Mary Ann Dutton when on a visit to England, and at this time was engaged to Miss Harriet McDermott. His sisters both were very cold about the engagement. They did not like second marriages at all, and considered it a disrespect to the first wife's memory, even though a decent interval had elapsed. When he wrote to me about it I took quite a different view. He said it was the kindest and the wisest letter I had ever written in my life, and he knew I had loved his late wife very much. He came to thank me, and to tell me that he had always wished that I should be in England at the time he was there, and that he was going in a P. & 0. boat immediately after his marriage. Although Mr. Stirling had promised to pay my passage, I hesitated about going. There were my mother, who was 72, and my guardianship of the Duvals to think about. I had also undertaken the oversight of old Mrs. Stephens, the widow of one of the early proprietors of The Register. These objections were all overruled. I still hesitated. "I cannot go unless I have money to spend," I urged. "Let me do that," was the generous reply.—"I have left you 500 pounds in my will. Let me have the pleasure of giving you something while I live." I was not too proud to owe that memorable visit to England to my two good friends. John Taylor had put into my hands on board the Goolwa, in which I sailed, a draft for 200 pounds for my spending money, and in the new will he made after his marriage he bequeathed me 300 pounds. I said "Goodby" to him, with good wishes for his health and happiness. I never saw him again. He took a sickly looking child on his knee when crossing the Isthmus of Suez—there was no canal in 1864—to relieve a weary mother. The child had smallpox, and my friend took it and died of it. He was being buried beside his first wife at Brighton when the Goolwa sailed up the Channel after a passage of 14 weeks—as long as that of the Palmyra 25 years before—and the first news we heard was that Miss Taylor had lost a brother, the children a favourite uncle, and I, a friend. It was a sad household, but the Bakewells were in London on business connected with some claims of discovery of the Moonta Mines, and they took me to their house in Palace Gardens. Kensington, till I could arrange to go to my aunt's in Scotland. All our plans about seeing people and places together were, of course, at an end. I was to go "a lone hand." Mrs. Taylor had a posthumous son, who never has set foot in Australia. She married a second time, an English clergyman named Knight, and had several sons, but she has never revisited Adelaide, although she has many relatives here. So the friend who loved Australia, and was eager to do his duty by it—who thoroughly approved of the Hare system of representation, and thought I did well to take it up, was snatched away in the prime of life. I wonder if there is any one alive now to whom his memory is as precious. The Register files may preserve some of his work.

At Palace Gardens the Bakewell family were settled in a furnished house belonging to Col. Palmer, one of the founders of South Australia, though never a resident. Palmer place, North Adelaide, bears his name. Thackeray's house we had to pass when we went out of the street in the direction of the city. His death had occurred in the previous year. I had an engagement with Miss Julia Wedgwood, through an introduction given by Miss Sophia Sinnett, an artist sister of Frederick Sinnett's. I was called for and sent home. I was not introduced to the family. It was a fine large house with men servants and much style. Miss Wedgwood, who was deaf, used an ear trumpet very cleverly. I found her as delightful as Miss Sinnett had represented her to be, and I discovered that Miss Sinnett had been governess to her younger sisters, but that there was real regard for her. I don't know that I ever spent a more delightful evening. She had just had Browning's "Dramatis Personae," and we read together "Rabbi Ben Ezira" and "Prospice." She knew about the Hare scheme of representation, supported by Mill and Fawcett and Craik. She was a good writer, with a fine critical faculty. Everything signed by her name in magazines or reviews was thenceforward interesting to me. I promised her a copy of my "Plea for Pure Democracy," which she accepted and appreciated. By the father's side she was a granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of British pottery as a fine art. Her mother was a daughter of Sir James Mackintosh. Mrs. Wedgwood was so much pleased with my pamphlet that she wanted to be introduced to me, and when I returned to London I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance. Miss Wedgwood gave me a beautifully bound copy of "Men and Women," of which she had a duplicate, which I cherish in remembrance of her.

During my stay I was visited by Mr. Hare. I had to face up to the people I had written to with no idea of any personal communication, and I must confess that I felt I must talk well to retain their good opinion. I promised to pay a visit to the Hares when I came to London for the season. He was a widower with eight children, whom he had educated with the help of a governess, but he was the main factor in their training. The two eldest daughters were married—Mrs. Andrews, the eldest, had helped him in his calculations for his great book on "Representation." His second daughter was artistic, and was married to John Westlake, an eminent lawyer, great in international law, a pupil of Colenso, who was then in London, and who was the best-abused man in the church. Another visitor was George Cowan, a great friend of my late brother-in-law, Mr. W. J. Wren, who wrote to him till his death, when the pen was taken up by my sister Mary till her death, and then I corresponded with him till his death. He came to London a raw Scotch lad, and met Mr. Wren at the Whittington Club. Both loved books and poetry, and both were struggling to improve themselves on small salaries. George Cowan had been entrusted with the printed slips of "Uphill Work," and had tried it at two publishers without success. I had to delay any operations till I returned to London, and promised to visit the Cowans there.



CHAPTER VII.

MELROSE REVISITED.

Jack Bakewell and Edward Lancelot Stirling went to see me off by the night train to Dunbar Station, five miles from Thornton-Loch, and I got there in time for breakfast. The old house was just the same except for an oriel window in the drawing room looking out on the North Sea, and the rocks which lay between it and Colhandy path (where my great-grandfather Spence had preached and his wife had preferred Wesley), and Chirnside, or Spence's Mains in the same direction. All the beautiful gardens, the farm village, where about 80 souls lived, the fields and bridges were just as I remembered them. My aunt Margaret was no longer the vigorous business-like woman whom I recollected riding or driving in her little gig an over the farm of 800 English acres which my great-grandfather had rented since 1811. Not the Miss Thompson whom I had introduced into "Uphill Work." She had had a severe stroke of paralysis, and was a prisoner to the house, only being lifted from her bed to be dressed, and to sit in a wheeled chair and be taken round the garden on fine days. The vigorous intellect was somewhat clouded, and the power of speech also; but she retained her memory. She was always at work with her needle (for her hands were not affected) for the London children, grandnieces, and nephews who called her grandmamma, for she had had the care of their Parents during 11 years of her brother Alexander's widowhood. But Aunt Margaret could play a capital game of whist—long whist. I could see that she missed it much on Sunday. It was her only relaxation. She had given up the farm to James Brodie, who had married her cousin Jane, the eldest of the two children she had mothered, and he had to come to the farm once or twice a week, having a still larger farm of his own in East Lothian, and a stock farm in Berwickshire also to look after. The son of the old farm steward, John Burnet, was James Brodie's steward, and I think the farm was well managed, but not so profitable as in old times. Aunt Mary said, in her own characteristic way, "she always knew that her sister was a clever woman, but that the cleverest thing she had done was taking up farming and carrying it on for 30 years when it was profitable, and turning it over when it began to fall off." But she turned it over handsomely, and did not interfere in the management. My Aunt Mary deserves a chapter for herself. She was my beau ideal of what a maiden aunt should be, though why she was never married puzzles more than me. Between my mother and her there was a love passing the love of sisters—my father liked her better than his own sisters. When my letter announcing my probable visit reached her she misread it, and thought it was Helen herself who was to come; and when she found out her mistake she shed many tears. I was all very well in my way, but I was not Helen. It was not the practice in old times to blazon an engagement, or to tell of an offer that had been declined; but my mother firmly believed that her sister Mary, the cleverest and, as she thought, the handsomest of the five sisters, had never in her life had an offer of marriage, although she had a love disappointment at 30. She had fixed her affections on a brilliant but not really worthy man, and she had to tear him out of her heart with considerable difficulty. It cost her a severe illness, out of which she emerged with what she believed to be a change of heart. She was a converted Christian. I myself don't think there was so much change. She was always a noble, generous woman, but she found great happiness in religion. Aunt Mary's disappointment made her most sympathetic to all love stories, and without any disappointment at all, I think I may say the same of myself. She was very popular with the young friends of her youngest brother, who might have experienced calf love; so very real, but so very ineffectual. One of these said to her:—"Oh, Miss Mary, you're just a delight, you are so witty." Another, when she spoke of some man who talked such delightful nonsense, said, "If you would only come to Branxholme I'd talk nonsense to you the haill (whole) day."

When I arrived at the old home I found Aunt Mary vigorously rubbing her hand and wrist (she had slipped downstairs in a neighbour's house, and broken her arm, and had to drive home before she could have it set). No one from the neighbour's house went to accompany her; no one came to enquire; no message was sent. When she recovered so far as to be able to be out, she met at Dunbar the gentleman and lady also driving in their conveyance. They greeted each other, and aunt could not resist the temptation to say:—"I am so glad to see you, and so glad that you have spoken to me, for I thought you were so offended at my taking the liberty of breaking my arm in your house that you did not mean to speak to me again." This little expression of what the French call malice, not the English meaning, was the only instance I can recollect of Aunt Mary's not putting the kindest construction on everybody's words and actions. But when I think of the love that Aunt Mary gathered to herself from brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and friends—it seems as if the happiest wife and mother of a large family could not reckon up as rich stores of affection. She was the unfailing correspondent of those members of the family who were separated by land and ocean from the old home, the link that often bound these together, the most tolerant to their failings, the most liberal in her aid—full of suggestions, as well as of sympathy. Now, in my Aunt Margaret's enfeebled state, she was the head of the house and the director of all things. Although she had differed from the then two single sisters and the family generally at the time of the disruption of the Church of Scotland, and gone over to the Free Church, the more intensely Calvinistic of the two, though accepting the same standards—the Westminster Confession and the Shorter Catechism—all the harsher features fell off the living texture of her faith like cold water off a duck's back. From natural preference she chose for her devotions those parts of the Bible which I selected with deliberate intention. She wondered to find so much spiritual kinship with me, when I built on such a different foundation. When I suggested that the 109th Psalm, which she read as the allotted portion in "Fletcher's Family Devotions," was not fit to be read in a Christian household, she said meekly—"You are quite right, I shall mark it, and never read it again."

My mother always thought me like her sister Mary, and when I asked Mr. Taylor if he saw any resemblance between us, he said, with cruel candour—"Oh, no. Your Aunt Mary is a very handsome woman." But in ways and manners, both my sister Mary and myself had considerable resemblances to our mother's favourite sister; and I can see traces of it in my own nieces. There can be no direct descent from maiden aunts, though the working ants and bees do not inherit their industrious habits from either male or female parents, but from their maiden aunts. Galton's theory, that potentialities not utilized by individuals or by their direct descendants may miss a generation or two, opens a wide field of thought, and collaterals may draw from the original source what was never suspected. And the Brodies intermarried in such a way as to shock modern ideas. When my father was asked if a certain Mr. Dudgeon, of Leith, was related to him, he said—"He is my mother's cousin and my stepmother's cousin, and my father-in-law's cousin, and my mother-in-law's cousin." Except for Spences and Wauchopes there was not a relative of my father that was not related to my mother. Grandfather Brodie married his cousin, and Grandfather Spence married his late wife, Janet Parks cousin Katherine Swanston. I cannot see that these close marriages produced degenerates, either physical or mental, in the case of my own family.

Of the twelve months I spent in the old country, I spent six with the dear old aunts. How proud Aunt Mary was of my third novel, with the sketch of Aunt Margaret in it, of the Cornhill article, and the request from Mr. Wilson to write for The Fortnightly. I introduced her to new books and especially to new poets; she had never heard of Browning and Jean Ingelow. She was so much cleverer than her neighbours that I often wondered how she could put up with them. How conservative these farmers and farmers' wives and daughters were, to be sure. These big tenants considered themselves quite superior to tradesmen, even to merchants, unless they were in a big way. There was infinitely more difference between their standard of living and that of their labourers than between theirs and that of the aristocratic landlords. James Barnet, the farm steward, said to me—"you have brought down the price of wheat with your Australian grain, and you do big things in wool, but you can never touch us in meat." This was quite true in 1865. I expected to see some improvement in the farm hamlet, but the houses built by the landlord were still very poor and bare. The wages had risen a little since 1839, but not much. The wheaten loaf was cheaper, and so was tea and sugar, but the poor were still living on porridge and bannocks of barley and pease meal instead of tea and white bread. It was questionable if they were as well nourished. There were 100 souls living on the farms of Thornton and Thornton Loch.

A short visit from Mrs. Graham to me at Thornton Loch opened up to Aunt Mary some of my treasures of memory. She asked me to recite "Brother in the Lane," Hood's "Tale of a Trumpet," "Locksley Hall." "The Pied Piper," and Jean Ingelow's "Songs of Seven." She made me promise to go to see her, and find out how much she had to do for her magnificent salary of 30 pounds a year; but she impressed Aunt Mary much. Mrs. Graham had found that the Kirkbeen folks, among whom she lived, were more impressed by the six months' experiences of two maiden ladies, who had gone to Valparaiso to join a brother who died, than with her fresh and racy descriptions of four young Australian colonies. She had seen Melbourne from 1852 to 1855—a wonderful growth and development. The only idea the ladies from Valparaiso formed about Australia was that it was hot and must be Roman Catholic, and consequently the Sabbath must be desecrated. It was in vain that my friend spoke of the Scots Church and Dr. Cairns's Church. Heat and Roman Catholicism were inseparably connected in their minds.

Visiting Uncle and Aunt Handyside and grown-up cousins, whom I left children, I saw a lot of good farming and the easy circumstances which I always associated with tenants' holdings in East Lothian. Next farm to Fenton was Fentonbarns, a Show place, which was held by George Hope, a cousin of my grandmother's He was an exceptional man—a radical, a freetrader, and a Unitarian. Cobden died that year. Uncle Handyside was surprised that George Hope did not go into mourning for him. John Bright still lived, and he was the bete noire of the Conservatives in that era; and the abolition of the corn laws was held to be the cause of the agricultural distress—not the high rent of agricultural land. George Hope was a striking personality. When my friend J. C. Woods was minister at St. Mark's Unitarian Church, Edinburgh, Mr. Hope used to be called the Bishop, though he lived 16 miles off. When the first Mrs. Woods died, leaving an infant son, it was Mrs. Hope who cared for it till it could go to his relatives in Ireland. Later he stood for Parliament himself. In the paper I wrote over the name of Edward Wilson for The Fortnightly I noted how the House of Commons represented the people—or misrepresented them. The House consisted of peers and sons of peers, military and naval officers, bankers, brewers, and landownership was represented enormously, but there were only two tenant farmers in the House. It was years after my return to Australia that I heard of his unsuccessful candidature, and that when he sought to take another lease of Fentonbarns, he was told that under no circumstances would his offer be entertained. Fentonbarns had been farmed by, three generations of Hopes for 100 years, and to no owner by parchment titles could it have been more dear. George Hope's friend, Russell, of The Scotsman, fulminated against the injustice of refusing a lease to the foremost agriculturist in Scotland—and when you say that you may say of the United Kingdom—because the tenant held certain political opinions and had the courage to express them. My uncle Handyside, however, always maintained that his neighbour was the most honourable man in business that he knew, and far from being an atheist or even a deist, he had family prayers, and on the occasion of a death in the family, the funeral service was most impressive. He was one of the salt of the earth, and the atmosphere was clearer around him for his presence.

But I must give some space to my visit to Melrose, my childhood's home. My father's half-sister Janet Reid was alive and though her two sons were, one at St. Kitts and the other at Grand Canary, she lived with an old husband and her only daughter in Melrose still.. I can never forget the look of tender pity cast on me as I was sitting in our old seat in church, looking at seats filled by another generation. The paterfamilias, so wonderfully like his father of 1839, and sons and daughters, sitting in the place of uncles and aunts settled elsewhere. They grieved that I had been banished from the romantic associations and the high civilization of Melrose to rough it in the wilds, while my heart was full of thankfulness that I had moved to the wider spaces and the more varied activities of a new and progressive colony. My dear old teacher was still alive, though the school had been closed for many years. She lived at St. Mary's with her elder sister, who had taught me sewing and had done the housekeeping, but she herself was almost blind, and a girl came every day to read to her for two or three hours. She told me what a good thing it was that she knew all the Psalms in the prose version by heart, for in the sleepless nights which accompany old age so often they were such a comfort to her in the night watches. I had sent her my two novels when they were published, "Clara Morison" and "Tender and True." She would have been glad if they had been more distinctly religious in tone. Indeed, the novel I began at 19 would have suited her better, but my brother's insistence on reading it every day as I wrote it somehow made me see what poor stuff it was, and I did not go far with it. But Miss Phin was, on the whole, pleased with my progress, and glad that I was able to go to see her and talk of old times. How very small the village of Melrose looked! How little changed! The distances to the neighbouring villages of Darnick and Newstead, and across the Tweed to Gattonsville, seemed so shrunken. It was not so far to Abbotsford as to Norwood. The very Golden Hills looked lower than my childish recollection of them. Aunt Janet Reid rejoiced over me sufficiently. "You are not like your mother in the face, but, oh, Katie, you are like dear Mrs. David in your ways. How I was determined to hate her when she came to Melrose first. I was not 13 and she was taking away the best of my brothers, the one that I liked best; but it did not take long before I was as fond of her as of David himself."

I also had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Murray, the parish schoolmaster, who taught my three brothers, then retired, living with his daughter, Louisa, an old schoolfellow at Miss Phin's. There was an absurd idea current in 1865 that all visiting Australians were rich and I could not disabuse people of that notion. Of all the two families of Brodies and Spences who came out in 1839 there was only my brother John who could be called successful. He was then manager of the Adelaide branch of the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank. If it had not been for help from the wonderful aunts from time to time both families would have been stranded. I had the greatest faith in the future of Australia, but I felt that for such gifts as I possessed there was no market at home. Possibly I should have tried literature earlier if I had remained in Scotland, but I am not at all sure that I could have succeeded as well. For the first time in my life I had as much money as I wanted. I am surprised now that I spent that 200 pounds when I had so much hospitality. In fact, except for a week in Paris, I never had any hotel expenses. I had got the money to enjoy it and I did. This was what my friend wished. I made a few presents. I bought some to take home with me. I spent money on dress freely, so as to present a proper appearance when visiting. I was liberal with veils, though I hate the practice. To a woman who had to look on both sides of a shilling since 1839 this experience was new and delightful. Among other people I went to see was Mrs. C——. the widow of the Tory writer and branch bank manager, who was my father's successful rival. He was not speculative like my father. He was a keen business man and had a great hunger for land.

On the gravestones around Melrose Abbey are many names with the avocation added—John Smith, builder; William Hogg, mason—but many with the word portioner. They were small proprietors, but they were not distinguished for the careful cultivation which in France is known as "LA PETITE CULTURE." No; the portions were most carelessly handled, and in almost every instance they were "bonded" or mortgaged. I recollect in old days these portioners used to make moonlight, flittings and disappear, or they sold off their holdings openly and went to America, meaning the United States. The tendency was to buy up these portions, and a considerable estate could be built up by any shrewd man who had money, or the command of it. Before we left Melrose in 1839, Mr. C—— had possession of a good deal of land. When he died he left property of the value of 90,000 pounds, an unheard-of estate for a country writer before the era of freetrade and general expansion. He had asked so much revenue from the railway company when the plan was to cut through the gardens we as children used to play in, that the company made a deviation and left the garden severely alone. The eldest daughter had married a landed proprietor, the second was single, the third married to a wealthy man in the west, the fourth the richest widow in Scotland. One son had land, and the other son land, and another business training. All was material success, and I am sure I did not grudge it to them, but when I took stock of real things I had not the least glimmering of a wish to exchange. One generally desires a little more money than one has; but even that may cost too much. I think my dear old Aunt Reid felt that the Spences had gone down in my father's terrible smash in 1839, and the C—— family had steadily gone up, and she was pleased that a niece from Australia, who had written two books and a wonderful pamphlet, and, more important still in the eyes of Mrs. Grundy, had money to spend and to give, was staying with her in Melrose, and wearing good and well made clothes. Old servants—the old laundress—old schoolfellows were visited. My father's old clerk, Allan Freer, had a good business in Melrose, though not equal to that of the Tory firm. I think the portioners were all sold out before he could enter the field, and the fate of these Melrose people has thoroughly emphasized for me the importance of having our South Australian workmen's blocks, the glory of Mr. Cotton's life, maintained always on the same footing of perpetual lease dependent on residence. If the small owner has the freehold, he is tempted to mortgage it, and then in most instances the land is lost to him, and added to the possessions of the man who has money. With a perpetual lease, there is the same security of tenure as in the freehold—indeed, there is more security, because he cannot mortgage. I did not see the land question as clearly on this 1865 visit, as I did later; but the extinction of the old portioners and the wealth acquired by the moneyed man of Melrose gave me cause for thinking.



CHAPTER VIII.

I VISIT EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

A visit to Glasgow and to the relatives of my sister-in-law opened out a different vista to me. This was a great manufacturing and commercial city, which had far outgrown Edinburgh in population and wealth; but the Edinburgh people still boasted of being the Athens of the north, the ancient capital with the grandest historic associations. In Glasgow I fell in with David Murray and his wife (of D. & W. Murray Adelaide)—not quite so important a personage as be became later. Not a relative of mine; but a family connection, for his brother William married Helen Cumming, Mrs. J. B. Spence's sister. David Murray was always a great collector of paintings, and especially of prints, which last he left to the Adelaide Art Gallery. He was a close friend of my brother John's until the death of the latter. One always enjoys meeting with Adelaide people in other lands, and comparing the most recent items of news. I went to Dumfries according to promise, and spent many days with my old friend Mrs. Graham, but stayed the night always with her sister, Mrs. Maxwell, wife of a printer and bookseller in the town. Dumfries was full of Burns's relies and memorials. Mr. Gilfillan had taken the likeness of Mrs. Burns and her granddaughter when he was a young man, and Mrs. Maxwell corresponded with the granddaughter. It was also full of associations with Carlyle. His youngest sister, Jean the Craw, as she was called on account of her dark hair and complexion was Mrs. Aitkin, a neighbour and close friend of Mrs. Maxwell. I was taken to see her, and I suppose introduced as a sort of author, and she regretted much that this summer Tom was not coming to visit her at Dumfries. She was a brisk, cheery person, with some clever daughters, who were friends of the Maxwell girls. When the Froude memorials came out no one was more indignant than Jean the Craw—"Tom and his wife always understood each other. They were not unhappy, though after her death he reproached himself for some things."

I found that my friend had just as much to do from morning to night as she could do, and I hoped with a great hope that "Uphill Work" would be published, and all the world would see how badly capable and industrious women were paid. I fancied that a three-volume novel would be read, marked, and inwardly digested by everybody! But Mrs. Graham was appreciated by the matron, the doctors, and by the people of Dumfries, as she had not been in the village of Kirkbeen. Her picturesque descriptions of life in the various colonies interested home-staying folk, for she had the keenest observing faculties. There was an old cousin of Uncle Handyside's who always turned the conversation on to Russia, where he had visited successful brothers; but his talk was not incisive. My cousin Agnes asked me when I supposed this visit was paid, and I said a few years ago, probably, when she laughed and said—"Nicol Handyside spent six weeks in Russia 30 years ago, and he has been talking about it ever since." One visit I paid in Edinburgh to an old lady from Melrose, who lived with a married daughter. She had always been very deaf, and the daughter was out. With great difficulty I got her to see by my card that my name was Spence. "Are you Jessie Spence?" I shook my head. "No; Katie." "Are you Mary Spence?" Another headshake, "No; I am Katie." "Then who are you?" She could understand the negative by the headshaking, but not anything else. I wanted a piece of paper or a slate badly, but the daughter came in and made her mother understand that I was the middle Spence girl, and then the old lady said, "It is a very hot country you come from," her only idea apparently of wonderful Australia. And to think that in times long past some intriguing aunts tried very hard to arrange a marriage between my father and the deaf young lady who had about 600 pounds a year in land in and near Melrose. She might have been my mother! The idea was appalling! None of her children inherited the deafness, and they took a fair proportion of good looks from their father, for the mother was exceedingly homely. A brightlooking grandson was on the rug looking through a bound volume of Punch, as my nephew in Australia loved to do. The two mothers were school companions and playmates.

My return to London introduced me to a wider range of society. I had admissions to the Ladies' Gallery of the House of Commons from Sir Charles Dilke, Professor Pearson's friend, and I had invitations to stay for longer or shorter periods with people various in means, in tastes, and in interests. To Mr. Hare I was especially drawn, and I should have liked to join him and his family in their yearly walking tour, which was to be through the Tyrol and Venice; but Aunt Mary protested for two good and sufficient reasons. The first was that I could not walk 16 or 20 miles a day, even in the mountains, which Katie Hare said was so much easier than on the plains; and the second was that to take six weeks out of my visit to the old country was a great deal too much. If it could have done any good to proportional representation I might have stood out; but it could not. For that I have since travelled thousands of miles by sea and by land; and, though not on foot, I have undergone much bodily fatigue and mental strain, but in these early days of the movement it had only entered the academic stage. My "Plea for Pure Democracy" had been written at a white heat of enthusiasm. I do not think I ever before or since reached a higher level. I took this reform more boldly than Mr. Mill, who sought by giving extra votes for property and university degrees or learned professions to cheek the too great advance of democracy. I was prepared to trust the people; and Mr. Hare was also confident that, if all the people were equitably represented in Parliament, the good would be stronger than the evil. The wise would be more effectual than the foolish. I do not think any one whom I met took the matter up so passionately as I did; and I had a feeling that in our new colonies the reform would meet with less obstruction than in old countries bound by precedent and prejudiced by vested interests. Parliament was the preserve of the wealthy in the United Kingdom. There was no property qualification for the candidate in South Australia, and we had manhood suffrage.

South Australia was the first community to give the secret ballot for political elections. It had dispensed with Grand Juries. It had not required a member of either House to stand a new election if he accepted Ministerial office. Every elected man was eligible for office. South Australia had been founded by doctrinaires, and occasionally a cheap sneer had been levelled at it on that account; but, to my mind, that was better than the haphazard way in which other colonies grew. When I visited Sir Rowland Hill he was recognised as the great post office reformer. To me he was also one of the founders of our province, and the first pioneer of quota representation. When I met Matthew Davenport Hill I respected him because he tried to keep delinquent boys out of gaol, and promoted the establishment of reform schools; but I also was grateful to him for suggesting to his brother the park lands which surround Adelaide, and give us both beauty and health. To Col. Light, who laid out the city so well, we owe the many open spaces and squares; but he did not originate the idea of the park lands. Much of the work of Mr. Davenport Hill and of his brother Frederick I took up later with their niece (Miss C. E. Clark), and their ideas have been probably more thoroughly carried out in South Australia than anywhere else; but in 1865 I was learning a great deal that bore fruit afterwards.

I fear it would make this narrative too long if I went into detail about the interesting people I met. Florence and Rossamund Davenport Hill introduced me to Miss Frances Power Cobbe, whose "Intuitive Morals" I admired so much. At Sir Rowland Hill's I met Sir Walter Crofter, a prison reformer; Mr. Wells, Editor of "All the Year Round;" Charles Knight, who had done so much for good and cheap literature; Madame Bodichon (formerly Barbara Smith), the great friend and correspondent of George Eliot, who was interesting to me because by introducing the Australian eucalyptus to Algeria she had made an unhealthy marshy country quite salubrious. She had a salon, where I met very clever men and women—English and French—and which made me wish for such things in Adelaide. The kindness and hospitality that were shown to me—an absolute stranger—by all sorts of people were surprising. Mr. and Mrs. Westlake took me on Sunday to see Bishop Colenso. He showed me the photo of the enquiring Zulu who made him doubt the literal truth of the early books of the Bible, and presented me with the people's edition of his work on the Pentateuch.

In all my travels and visits I saw little of the theatre or concert room, and some of the candid confessions of Mrs. Oliphant might stand for my own. I had read so many plays before I saw one that the unreality of much of the acted drama impressed me unfavourably. The asides in particular seemed impossible, and I think the more carefully the pieces are put on the stage the more critical I become concerning their probability; and when I hear the praise of the beautiful and expensive theatrical wardrobes which, in the case of actresses seem to set the fashion for the wealthy and well-born, I feel that it is a costly means of making the story more unlikely. I seem to lose the identity of the heroine who in two hours wears three or four different toilettes complete. As Mrs. Oliphant did not identify the "nobody in white tights" who rendered from "Twelfth Night" the lovely lines beginning "That strain again; it had a dying fall" with the Orsino she had imagined when reading the play, so I, who knew "She Stoops to Conquer" almost by heart, was disappointed when I saw it on the stage. I was taken to the opera once by Mr. and Mrs. Bakewell, and heard Patti in "Don Giovanni," at Covent Garden, but opera of all kinds is wasted on me. I liked some of the familiar airs and choruses, but all opera needs far more make-believe than I am capable of. It is a pity that I am so insensible to the youngest and the most progressive of the fine arts. I am, however, in the good company of Mrs. Oliphant, who, speaking of the musical parties in Eton, where she lived so long, for the education of tier boys, writes in words that suit me perfectly: "In one of these friends' houses a family quartet played what were rather new and terrible to me—long sonatas and concerted pieces which filled my soul with dismay. It is a dreadful confession to make, and proceeds from want of education and instruction, but I fear any appreciation of music I have is purely literary. I love a song and a 'tune;' the humblest fiddler has sometimes given me the greatest pleasure, and sometimes gone to my heart; but music, properly so called, the only music that many of my friends would listen to, is to me a wonder and a mystery. My mind wanders through adagios and andantes, gaping, longing to understand. Will no one tell me what it means? I want to find the old unhappy far off things which Wordsworth imagined in the Gaelic song of the 'Highland Lass.' I feel out of it, uneasy, thinking all the time what a poor creature I must be. I remember the mother of the sonata players approaching me with beaming countenance on the occasion of one of these performances, expecting the compliment which I faltered forth, doing my best not to look insincere. 'And I have this every evening of my life,' cried the triumphant mother. 'Good heavens, and you have survived it all' was my internal response." But the worst thing is when you do not expect a musical evening and this superior music is sprung on you. Mrs. Webster and I were once invited to meet some very interesting people, some of the best conversationalists in Melbourne, and we were given high-class music instead, and scarcely could a remark be exchanged when a warning finger was held up and silence insisted on. I could not sing, but sometimes I attempted to hum a tune. I recollect during my first visit to Melbourne, my little nephew Johnnie, delighted in the rhymes and poems which I recited; but one day when I was ironing I began to sing, and he burst out with "Don't sing, auntie; let me hear the voice of your words." So for my own delectation I began Wordsworth's "Leechgatherer"—

There was a roaring in the wind all night, The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright. The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the stock dove broods. The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters, And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

"Oh, that's pretty, auntie; say it again," I said it again, and yet again, at his request, till he could almost repeat it. And he was not quite 4 years old. He is still alive, and has not become a poet, which was what I expected in those early days. He could repeat great screeds of Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin," which was his especial favourite. Music has often cheated me of what is to me the keenest pleasure in life. Like Samuel Johnson, I enjoy greatly "good talk," though I never took such a dominant part in it. There are two kinds of people who reduce me to something like silence—those who know too little and those who know too much. My brother-in-law's friend, Mr. Cowan, was a great talker, and a good one, but he scarcely allowed me a fair share. He was also an admirable correspondent.

One predominant talker I met at Mr. Edwin Hill's—William Ellis, a special friend of the Hills, and a noteworthy man. One needs to look back 60 years to become conscious of how much English education was in the hands of the church. Not only the public schools and the university were overshadowed by the Established Church, but what schools were accessible to the poor were a sort of appanage to the rectory, and the teachers were bound to work for the good of the church and the convenience of the incumbent. The commercial schools, which were independent of the church, to which Non-conformists sent their boys, were satirised by Dickens, and they deserved the satire. The masters were generally incompetent, and the assistant teachers or ushers were the most miserable in regard to payment and status. William Ellis expended large sums of money, and almost all his leisure, in establishing secular schools that were good for something. He called them Birkbeck schools, thus doing honour to the founder of mechanics' institutes, and perhaps the founder of the first of these schools; and he taught what he called social science in them himself. He was the Senor Ferrer of England; and, though he escaped martyrdom in the more enlightened country he was looked on suspiciously by those who considered education that was not founded on revealed religion and permeated by its doctrines as dangerous and revolutionary.

But there was one great personage who saw the value of those teachings on things that make for human happiness and intellectual freedom, and that was the Prince Consort. He asked William Ellis to give some lessons to the eldest of the Royal children—the Princess Victoria, Prince Edward (our present King), and Prince Alfred, afterwards Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Mr. Ellis said all three were intelligent, and Princess Victoria exceptionally so. What a tragedy it was—more so than that of many an epic or drama—that the Princess Royal and the husband of her choice, who had educated themselves and each other to take the reins of the German Empire, and had drawn up so many Plans for the betterment of the general conditions of the people, should, on their accession to power, have met death standing on the steps of the throne; and that only a powerless widow should have been left without much authority over her masterful son. But my firm belief is that in many of the excellent things that the Kaiser William has done for his people, he is working on the plans that had been committed to writing by the Crown Prince and Princess. Her father's memory was so dear to the Crown Princess that anything he had suggested to her was cherished all her life; and I do not doubt that these early lessons on the right relation of human beings to each other—the social science which regards human happiness as depending on justice and toleration—is even now bearing fruit in the Fatherland. Shortsighted mortals see the immediate failures, but in the larger eye of the Infinite and the Eternal there is always progress towards better things from every honest attempt to remedy injustice, and to increase knowledge.

I arranged for a week in Paris with my young friends, Rosa and Symonds Clark, of Hazelwood, and we travelled as far as Paris with the Hare family, who went on to the Tyrol. We enjoyed the week. Louis Napoleon appeared then to be quite secure on his throne, and we saw the fetes and illuminations for his birthday. What a day and night of rain it was! But the thousands of people, joyful and good-humoured under umbrellas or without them—gave us a favourable impression of Parisian crowds. In London I had been with Mr. Cowan in the crush to the theatre. It was contrary to his principles to book seats, and I never was so frightened in my life. I thought a London crowd rough and merciless. I was the only one of the party who could speak any French, and I spoke it badly, and had great difficulty in following French conversations; but we got into a hotel where no English was spoken, and managed to pull through. But we did not know a soul, and I think we did not learn so much from our week's sightseeing as we should have done if Miss Katie Hare had stayed the week with us.

I then paid a visit to Birmingham, and spent a week at the sittings of the British Association. By subscribing a guinea I was made an Associate, and some of the sessions were very interesting, but much too deep for me. I sat out a lecture on the Higher Mathematics, by Professor Henry Smith, to whom Professor Pearson gave me an introduction, in hopes that I might visit Oxford; but he was going abroad, and I could not go to Oxford if I knew nobody—especially alone. I went, however, to Carr's Lane Chapel, where a humble friend had begged me to go, because there she had been converted, and there the Rev. R. W. Dale happened to preach on "Where prayer was wont to be made." He said that consecration was not due to a Bishop or to any ecclesiastical ceremony, but to the devout prayers and praise of the faithful souls within it—that thousands over Scotland and England, and others in America, Australia, and New Zealand, look back to words which they had heard and praises and prayers in which they had joined as the holiest times in their lives. I thought of my good Mrs. Ludlow, and thanked God for her. When Mr. Cowan took me to the church in Essex place where he and his friend Wren used to hear Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P. for Oldham, preach, a stranger, a young American, was there. I found out afterwards he was Moncure Conway, and he gave us a most striking discourse. There was going on in Birmingham at this time a controversy between the old Unitarians and the new. In the Church of the Messiah the old ministers gave a series of sermons on the absolute truth of the New Testament miracles. The Old Testament he was quite willing to give up, but he pinned his faith on those wrought by Christ and His apostles. Some of the congregation told me they had never thought of doubting them before, but the more Mr. B. defended them as the bulwarks of Christianity, the more they felt that our religion rested on other foundations. I saw a good deal of the industrial life of Birmingham, and had a sight of the Black Country by day and by night. Joseph Chamberlain was then a young man; I believe he was a Sunday school teacher. The Unitarian Sunday Schools taught writing and arithmetic as well as reading. In the terrible lack of national day schools many of the poor had no teaching at all but what was given on Sundays, and no time on other days of the week to learn anything. I could not help contrasting the provision made by the parish schools of Scotland out of the beggarly funds or tithes given for church and schools out of the spoils of the Ancient Church by the Lords of the Congregation. Education was not free, but it was cheap, and it was general. Scotchmen made their way all over the world better than Englishmen mainly because they were better educated. The Sunday school was not so much needed, and was much later in establishing itself in Scotland. Good Hannah More taught girls to read the Bible under a spreading tree in her garden because no church would give her a place to teach in. "If girls were taught to read where would we get servants?" It was an early cry.



CHAPTER IX.

MEETING WITH J. S. MILL AND GEORGE ELIOT.

I leave to the last of my experiences in the old world in 1865-6 my interviews with John Stuart Mill and George Eliot. Stuart Mill's wife was the sister of Arthur and of Alfred Hardy, of Adelaide, and the former had given to me a copy of the first edition of Mill's "Political Economy," with the original dedication to Mrs. John Taylor, who afterwards became Mill's wife, which did not appear in subsequent editions; but, as he had two gift copies of the same edition, Mr. Hardy sent it on to me with his almost illegible handwriting:—"To Miss Spence from the author, not, indeed, directly, but in the confidence felt by the presenter that in so doing he is fulfilling the wish of the author—viz., circulating his opinions, more especially in such quarters as the present, where they will be accurately considered and tested." I had also seen the dedication to Harriet Mill's beloved memory of the noble book on "Liberty." Of her own individual work there was only one specimen extant—an article on the "Enfranchisement of women," included in Mill's collected essays—very good, certainly, but not so overpoweringly excellent as I expected. Of course, it was an early advocacy of the rights of women, or rather a revival of Mary Wollstoneeraft's grand vindication of the rights of the sex; and this was a reform which Mill himself took up more warmly than proportional representation, and advocated for years before Mr. Hare's revelation. For myself, I considered electoral reform on the Hare system of more value than the enfranchisement of women, and was not eager for the doubling of the electors in number, especially as the new voters would probably be more ignorant and more apathetic than the old. I was accounted a weak-kneed sister by those who worked primarily for woman suffrage, although I was as much convinced as they were that I was entitled to a vote, and hoped that I might be able to exercise it before I was too feeble to hobble to the poll. I have unfortunately lost the letter Mr. Mill wrote to me about my letters to The Register, and my "Plea for Pure Democracy," but it gave him great pleasure to see that a new idea both of the theory and practice of politics had been taken up and expanded by a woman, and one from that Australian colony, of which he had watched and aided the beginnings, as is seen by the name of Mill terrace, North Adelaide, to-day. Indeed, both Hare and Mill told me their first converts were women; and I felt that the absolute disinterestedness of my "Plea," which was not for myself, but only that the men who were supposed to represent me at the polling booth should be equitably represented themselves, lent weight to my arguments. I have no axe to grind—no political party to serve; so that it was not until the movement for the enfranchisement of women grew too strong to be neglected that I took hold of it at all; and I do not claim any credit for its success in South Australia and the Commonwealth, further than this—that by my writings and my spoken addresses I showed that one woman had a steady grasp on politics and on sociology. In 1865, when I was in England, Mr. Mill was permanently resident at Avignon, where his wife died, but he had to come to England to canvass for a seat in Parliament for Westminster as an Independent member, believed at that time to be an advanced Radical, but known to be a philosopher, and an economist of the highest rank in English literature. I had only one opportunity of seeing him personally, and I did not get so much out of him as I expected—he was so eager to know how the colony and colonial people were developing. He asked me about property in land and taxation, and the relations between employers and employes, and I was a little amused and a little alarmed when he said he was glad to get information from such a good authority. I had to disclaim such knowledge; but he said he knew I was observant and thoughtful, and what I had seen I had seen well. He was particularly earnest about woman's suffrage, and Miss Taylor, his stepdaughter, said she thought he had made a mistake in asking for the vote for single women only and widows with property and wives who had a separate estate; it would have been more logical to have asked for the vote on the same terms as were extended to men. The great man said meekly—"Well, perhaps I have made a mistake, but I thought with a property qualification the beginning would awake less antagonism." He said to me that if I was not to return to London till January we were not likely to meet again. He walked with me bareheaded to the gate, and it was farewell for both.

Wise man as Mill was he did not foresee that his greatest object, the enfranchisement of women, would be carried at the antipodes long before there was victory either in England or America. When I received, in 1869 from the publisher, Mr. Mill's last book, "The Subjection of Women," I wrote thanking him for the gift. The reply was as follows:—"Avignon, November 28, 1869—Dear Madam—Your letter of August 16 has been sent to me here. The copy of my little book was intended for you, and I had much pleasure in offering it. The movement against women's disabilities generally, and for the suffrage in particular, has made great progress in England since you were last there. It is likely, I think, to be successful in the colonies later than in England, because the want of equality in social advantages between women and men is less felt in the colonies owing, perhaps, to women's having less need of other occupations than those of married life—I am, dear Madam, yours very truly, J. S. Mill." I have always held that, though the Pilgrim Fathers ignored the right of the Pilgrim Mothers to the credit of founding the American States—although these women had to take their full share of the toils and hardships and perils of pioneer and frontier life, and had in addition to put up with the Pilgrim Fathers themselves—Australian colonization was carried out by men who were conscious of the service of their helpmates, and grateful for it. In New Zealand and South Australia, founded on the Wakefield system, where the sexes were almost equal in number, and the immigration was mainly that of families, the first great triumphs for the political enfranchisement of women were won, and through South Australia the women of the Commonwealth obtained the Federal vote for both Houses: whereas even in the sparsely inhabited western states in the United States which have obtained the State vote the Federal vote is withheld from them. But Mill died in 1873, 20 years before New Zealand or Colorado obtained woman's suffrage.

In treating of my one interview with Mr. Mill I have carried the narrative down to 1869. With regard to my single meeting with George Eliot, I have to begin in 1865, and conclude even later. Before I left England Mr. Williams, of Smith, Elder, & Co., offered me an introduction to George Henry Lewes, and I expressed the hope that it might also include an introduction to George Eliot, whose works I so admired. Mr. Lewes being away from home when I called, I requested that the introductory letter of Mr. Williams should be taken to George Eliot herself. She received me in the big Priory drawing room, with the grand piano, where she held her receptions and musical evenings; but she asked me if I had any business relating to the article which Mr. Williams had mentioned, and I had to confess that I had none. For once I felt myself at fault. I did not get on with George Eliot. She said she was not well, and she did not look well. That strong pale face, where the features were those of Dante or Savanarola, did not soften as Mill's had done. The voice, which was singularly musical and impressive, touched me—I am more susceptible to voices than to features or complexion—but no subject that I started seemed to fall in with her ideas, and she started none in which I could follow her lead pleasantly. It was a short interview, and it was a failure. I felt I had been looked on as an inquisitive Australian desiring an interview upon any pretext; and indeed, next day I had a letter from Mr. Williams, in which he told me that, but for the idea that I had some business arrangement to speak of, she would not have seen me at all. So I wrote to Mr. Williams that, as I had been received by mistake, I should never mention the interview; but that impertinent curiosity was not at all my motive in going that unlucky day to The Priory.

Years passed by. I read everything, poetry and prose, that came from George Eliot's pen, and was so strong an admirer of her that Mr. W. L. Whitham, who took charge of the Unitarian Church while our pastor (Mr. Woods) had a long furlough in England, asked me to lecture on her works to his Mutual Improvement Society, and I undertook the task with joy. Mr. H. G. Turner asked for the MS. to publish in the second number of The Melbourne Review, a very promising quarterly for politics and literature. I thought that, if I sent the review to George Eliot with a note it might clear me from the suspicion of being a mere vulgar lionhunter. Her answer was as follows:—"The Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park, September 4, 1876. Dear Madam—Owing to an absence of some months, it was only the other day that I read your kind letter of April 17; and, although I have long been obliged to give up answering the majority of letters addressed to me, I felt much pleased that you had given me an opportunity of answering one from you; for I have always remembered your visit with a regretful feeling that I had probably caused you some pain by a rather unwise effort to give you a reception which the state of my health at the moment made altogether blundering and infelicitous. The mistake was all on my side, and you were not in the least to blame. I also remember that your studies have been of a serious kind, such as were likely to render a judgment on fiction and poetry, or, as the Germans, with better classification, say, in 'DICHTUNG' in general, quite other than the superficial haphazard remarks of which reviews are generally made. You will all the better understand that I have made it a rule not to read writing about myself. I am exceptionally sensitive and liable to discouragement; and to read much remark about my doings would have as depressing an effect on me as staring in a mirror—perhaps, I may say, of defective glass. But my husband looks at all the numerous articles that are forwarded to me, and kindly keeps them out of my way—only on rare occasions reading to me a passage which he thinks will comfort me by its evidence of unusual insight or sympathy. Yesterday he read your article in The Melbourne Review, and said at the end—'This is an excellently written article, which would do credit to any English periodical' adding the very uncommon testimony, 'I shall keep this.' Then he told me of some passages in it which gratified me by that comprehension of my meaning—that laying of the finger on the right spot—which is more precious than praise, and forthwith he went to lay The Melbourne Review in the drawer he assigns to any writing about me that gives him pleasure. For he feels on my behalf more than I feel on my own, at least in matters of this kind. If you come to England again when I happen to be in town I hope that you will give me the pleasure of seeing you under happier auspices than those of your former visit.—I am, dear madam, yours sincerely, M. G. Lewes." The receipt of this kind and candid letter gave me much pleasure; and, although on the strength of that, I cannot boast of being a correspendent of that great woman, I was able to say that I had seen and talked with her, and that she considered me a competent critic of her work. Mrs. Oliphant says that George Eliot's life impelled her to make an involuntary confession—"How have I been handicapped in life? Should I have done better if I had been kept, like her, in a mental green-house and taken care of? I have always had to think of other people and to plan everything for my own pleasure, it is true, very often, but always in subjection to the necessity which bound me to them. To bring up the boys—my own and Frank's—for the service of God was better than to write a fine novel, if it had been in my power to do so." The heart knows its own bitterness. There might have been some points in which George Eliot might have envied Mrs. Oliphant.



CHAPTER X.

RETURN FROM THE OLD COUNTRY.

Before leaving Scotland I arranged that my friend, Mrs. Graham of the strenuous life and 30 pounds a year, should undertake the care of my aunts, to their mutual satisfaction. My last days in England were spent in either a thick London fog or an equally undesirable Scotch mist, which shrouded everything in obscurity, and made me long for the sunny skies and the clear atmosphere of Australia. I told my friends that in my country it either rained or let it alone. Indeed, the latest news from all Australia was that it had let it alone very badly, and that the overstocking of stations during the preceding good seasons had led to enormous losses. Sheepfarmers made such large profits in good seasons that they were apt to calculate that it was worth while to run the risk of drought; but experience has shown that overstocking does not really pay. The making of dams, the private and public provision of water in the underground reservoirs by artesian bores, and the facilities for travelling stock by such ways have all lessened the risks which the pioneer pastoralists ran bravely in the old days. An Australian drought can never be as disastrous in the twentieth century as it was in 1866; and South Australia, the Central State, has from the first been a pioneer in development as well as in exploration. The hum of the reaping machine first awoke the echoes in our wheatfields. The stump-jumping plough and the mullenicer which beats down the scrub or low bush so that it can be burnt, were South Australian inventions, copied elsewhere, which have turned land accounted worthless into prolific wheat fields.

If South Australia was the first of the States to exhaust her agricultural soil, she was the first to restore it by means of fertilizers and the seed drill. When I see the drilled wheat fields I recollect my grandfather's two silver salvers—the Prizes from the Highland Society for having the largest area of drilled wheat in Scotland—and when I see the grand crops on the Adelaide Plains I recall the opinion that, with anything like a decent rainfall, that soil could grow anything. In 1866 the northern areas had not been opened. The farmers were continuing the process of exhausting the land by growing wheat—wheat—wheat, with the only variety wheaten hay. I recollect James Burnet's amazement when I said that our horses were fed on wheaten hay. "What a waste of the great possibilities of a grain harvest!" He was doubtful when I said that with plenty of wheaten hay the horses needed no corn. South Australia, except about Mount Gambier, does not grow oats, though Victoria depends on oaten hay. The British agriculturist thinks that meadow hay is the natural forage for horses and cattle, and for winter turnips are the standby. It was a little amusing to me that I could speak with some authority to skilled and experienced agriculturists, who felt our rivalry at Mark lane, but who did not dream that with the third great move of Australia towards the markets of the world through cold storage we could send beef, mutton, lamb, poultry, eggs, and all kinds of fruit to the consumers of Europe, and especially of England and its metropolis. I did not see it, any more than the people to whom I talked. I still thought that for meat and all perishable commodities the distance was an insuperable obstacle, and that, except for live stock from America, or canned meat from Australia, the United Kingdom would continue self-supporting on these lines.

I returned to Australia, when this island continent was in the grip of one of the most severe and protracted droughts in its history. The war between Prussia and Austria had begun and ended; the failure of Overend and Gurney and others brought commercial disaster; and my brother, with other bankers, had anxious days and sleepless nights. Some rich men became richer; many poor men went down altogether. Our recovery was slow but sure. In the meantime I found life at home very dull after my interesting experiences abroad. There was nothing to do for proportional representation except to write an occasional letter to the press. So I started another novel, which was published serially in The Observer. Mr. George Bentley, who published it subsequently in book form, changed its title from "Hugh Lindsay's Guest" to "The Author's Daughter." But my development as a public speaker was more important than the publication of a fourth novel. Much had been written on the subject of public speaking by men, but so far nothing concerning the capacities of women in that direction. And yet I think all teachers will agree that girls in the aggregate excel boys in their powers of expression, whether in writing, or in speech, though boys may surpass them in such studies as arithmetic and mathematics. Yet law and custom have put a bridle on the tongue of women, and of the innumerable proverbs relating to the sex, the most cynical are those relating to her use of language. Her only qualification for public speaking in old days was that she could scold, and our ancestors imposed a salutary cheek on this by the ducking stool in public, and sticks no thicker than the thumb for marital correction in private. The writer of the Proverbs alludes to the perpetual dropping of a woman's tongue as an intolerable nuisance, and declares that it is better to live on the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. A later writer, describing the virtuous woman, said that on her lips is the law of kindness, and after all this is the real feminine characteristic. As daughter, sister, wife, and mother—what does not the world owe to the gracious words, the loving counsel, the ready sympathy which she expresses? Until recent years, however, these feminine Rifts have been strictly kept for home consumption, and only exercised for the woman's family and a limited circle of friends. In 1825, when I first opened my eyes on the world, there were indeed women who displayed an interest in public affairs. My own mother not only felt the keenest solicitude regarding the passing of the Reform Bill, but she took up her pen, and with two letters to the local press, under the signature of "Grizel Plowter," showed the advantages of the proposed measure. But public speaking was absolutely out of the question for women, and though I was the most ambitious of girls, my desire was to write a great book—not at all to sway an audience. When I returned from my first visit to England in 1866, I was asked by the committee of the South Australian Institute to write a lecture on my impressions of England, different from the article which had appeared in The Cornhill Magazine under that title, but neither the committee nor myself thought of the possibility of my delivering it. My good friend, the late Mr. John Howard Clark, Editor of The Register, kindly offered to read it. I did not go to hear it, but I was told that he had difficulty in reading my manuscript, and that, though he was a beautiful reader, it was not very satisfactory. So I mentally resolved that if I was again asked I should offer to read my own MS. Five years afterwards I was asked for two literary lectures by the same committee, and I chose as my subjects the works of Elizabeth Browning and those of her husband, Robert Browning. Now, I consider that the main thing for a lecturer is to be heard, and a rising young lawyer (now our Chief Justice) kindly offered to take the back seat, and promised to raise his hand if he could not hear. It was not raised once, so I felt satisfied. I began by saying that I undertook the work for two reasons—first, to make my audience more familiar with the writings of two poets very dear to me; and second, to make easier henceforward for any woman who felt she had something to say to stand up and say it. I felt very nervous, and as if my knees were giving way; but I did not show any nervousness. I read the lecture, but most of the quotations I recited from memory. Not having had any lessons in elocution, I trusted to my natural voice, and felt that in this new role the less gesticulation I used the better. Whether the advice of Demosthenes is rightly translated or not—first requisite, action; second, action; third, action—I am sure that English word does not express the requisite for women. I should rather call it earnestness—a conviction that what you say is worth saying, and worth saying to the audience before you. I had a lesson on the danger of overaction from hearing a gentleman recite in public "The dream of Eugene Aram," in which he went through all the movements of killing and burying the murdered man. When a tale is crystallized into a poem it does not require the action of a drama. However little action I may use I never speak in public with gloves on. They interfere with the natural eloquence of the hand. After these lectures I occasionally was asked to give others on literary subjects.

At this time I began to study Latin with my nephew, a boy of 14. He was then an orphan, my youngest and beloved sister Mary having recently died and left her two children to my care. My teacher thought me the more apt pupil, but it was really due more to my command of English than to my knowledge of Latin that I was able to get at the meaning of Virgil and Horace. When it came to Latin composition I was no better than the boy of 14. Before the death of my sister the family invested in land in Trinity street, College Town, and built a house. Mother had planned the house she moved into when I was six months old, and she delighted in the task, though she said it seemed absurd to build a house in her seventy-ninth year. But she lived in it from January, 1870, till December, 1887, and her youngest daughter lived in it for only ten months. Before that time I had embarked with my friend, Miss Clark, on one of the greatest enterprises of my life—one which led to so much that my friends are apt to say that, if I am recollected at all, it will be in connection with the children of the State and not with electoral reform. But I maintain now, as I maintained then, that the main object of my life is proportional representation, or, to use my brother John's term, effective voting.



CHAPTER XI

WARDS OF THE STATE.

In a little book which the State Children's Council requested me to write as a memorial of the great work of Miss C. E. Clark on her retirement at the age of 80, I have given an account of the movement from the beginning down to 1907, which had its origin in South Australia under the leadership of Miss Clark. When I was on my way cut from England, Miss Clark wrote a letter to The Register, suggesting that the destitute, neglected, or orphaned children should be removed from the Destitute Asylum and placed in natural homes with respectable people; but the great wave which came over England about that time for building industrial schools and reformatories affected South Australia also, and the idea was that, though the children should be removed from the older inmates, it should be to an institution. Land was bought and plans were drawn up for an industrial school at Magill, five miles from Adelaide, when Miss Clark came to me and asked me to help her to take a different course. She enlisted Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Colton and Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Davenport in the cause, and we arranged for a deputation to the Minister; Howard Clark, Neville Blyth, and Mr. C. B. Young joined us. We offered to find country homes and provide lady visitors, but our request was simply scouted. As we did not offer to bear any of the cost it would be absurd to give us any share in the administration. Children would only be given homes for the sake of the money paid, and Oliver Twist's was held up as the sort of apprenticeship likely to be secured for pauper children. So we had to play the waiting game. The school built to accommodate 230 children was on four floors, though there was 40 acres of good land. It was so popular that, though only 130 went in at first, in two years it was so full that there was talk of adding a wing. This was our opportunity, and the same men and women went on another deputation, and this time we prevailed, and were allowed to place out the overflow as an experiment; and not only the Boarding-out Committee, but the official heads of the Destitute Department, were surprised and delighted with the good homes we secured for 5/ a week, and with the improvement in health, in intelligence, and in happiness that resulted from putting children into natural homes. What distinguishes work for children in Australia from what is done elsewhere is that it is national, and not philanthropic. The State is in loco-parentis, and sees that what the child needs are a home and a mother—that, if the home and the mother are good, the child shall be kept there; but that vigilant inspection is needed, voluntary or official—better to have both. Gradually the Magill School was emptied, and the children were scattered. Up to the age of 13 the home was subsidized, but when by the education law the child was free from school attendance, and went to service, the supervision continued until the age of 18 was reached. For nearly 14 years, from 1872 to 1886, the Boarding-out Society pursued its modest labours as auxiliary to the Destitute Board. Our volunteer visitors reported in duplicate—one copy for the official board, and one for the unofficial committee. When the method was inaugurated, Mr. T. S. Reed. Chairman of the Board, was completely won over. We had nothing to do with the reformatories, except that our visitors went to see those placed out at service in their neighbourhood.

Our success attracted attention elsewhere. The late Dr. Andrew Garran, who was on The Register when I went to England, had moved to Sydney in my absence, and was on the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald. When Miss Clark went to England in 1877, after her mother's death, Dr. Garran wrote to me for some account of our methods, and of their success, physical, moral, and financial. Dr. Garran came out with Mr. G. F. Angas and the Australian Constitution in 1851 in search of health and work, both of which he found here. The first pages of my four volumes of newspaper cuttings are filled with two long articles, "The Children of the State," and this started the movement in New South Wales, led by Mrs. Garran, nee Sabine, and Mrs. Jefferis wife of the leading Congregational minister, moved from Adelaide to Sydney. Professor Henry Pearson asked me a year or two later to give similar information to The Melbourne Age. Subsequently I wrote on this subject, by request, to Queensland, New Zealand, and I think also Tasmania, where we were imitated first, but where there are still to be found children of the State in institutions. In Victoria and New South Wales a vigorous policy emptied these buildings, which were used for other public purposes, and the children were dispersed. The innovation which at first was scouted as utopian, next suspected as leading to neglect, or even unkindness—for people would only take these children for what they could make out of them—was found to be so beneficial that nobody in Australia would like to return to the barrack home or the barrack school. If the inspection had been from the first merely official, public opinion would have been suspicious and sceptical, but when ladies saw the children in these homes, and watched how the dull faces brightened, and the languid limbs became alert after a few weeks of ordinary life—when the cheeks became rosier, and the eyes had new light in them; when they saw that the foster parents took pride in their progress at school, and made them handy about the house, as they could never be at an institution, where everything is done at the sound of a bell or the stroke of a clock—these ladies testified to what they knew, and the public believed in them. In other English-speaking countries boarding-out in families is sometimes permitted; but here, under the Southern Cross, it is the law of the land that children shall not be brought up in institutions, but in homes: that the child whose parent is the State shall have as good schooling as the child who has parents and guardians; that every child shall have, not the discipline of routine and redtape, but free and cheerful environment of ordinary life, preferably in the country—going to school with other young fellow citizens, going to church with the family in which he is placed, having the ordinary ditties, the ordinary difficulties, the ordinary pleasures of common life; but guarded from injustice, neglect, and cruelty by effective and kindly supervision. This movement, originated in South Australia, and with all its far-reaching developments and expansions, is due to the initiative of one woman of whom the State is justly proud—Miss Caroline Emily Clark.

Even while we were only a Boarding-out Committee, it was found necessary to have one paid inspector; but there was great dissatisfaction with the Boys' Reformatory which had been located in an old leaky hulk, where the boys could learn neither seamanship nor anything else—and with some other details of the management of the destitute poor, and a commission with the Chief Justice as Chairman, was appointed to make enquiries and suggest reforms. The result was the separation of the young from the old absolutely; and a new body, the State Children's Council, of 12 men and women of nearly equal proportions, had authority over the reformatories, as well as what was called the industrial school, which was to be reduced to a mere receiving home, and all the children placed out, either on subsidy or at service. Most of the old committee were appointed; but, to my great joy, Dr. Edward C. Stirling and Mr. James Smith, the most enlightened man on the Destitute Board, were among the new members. We had a paid stall, with a most able secretary—Mr. J. B. Whiting.

Dr. Stirling was unanimously voted in as President, and we felt we began our new duties under the most promising auspices. But, alas, in two years there was so much friction between the council and the Ministry that we all resigned in a body, except Mrs. Colton (who was in England) and Mrs. Farr. We were fighting the battle of the unpaid boards, and we were so strong in the public estimation that we might have won the victory. The Government had relieved children on the petition of parents, contrary to the strong recommendation of the council. Although the commission had declared that the reformatory boys should be removed at once from the hulk Fitzjames, they were still kept there, and the only offer of accommodation given was to share the Magill Industrial School with the reformatory girls. Now, this the council would not hear of, for we felt that the Government plans for separate entrances and separate staircases were absolutely futile and ridiculous for keeping apart these two dangerous classes in a single building. The Government gave way on the point of providing a separate building for the reformatory girls; and the committee, with the exception of Dr. Stirling and Mr. James Smith—our two strongest members—were reappointed. The official staff was increased by the appointment of clerks and inspectors, many of them women, who have always given every satisfaction, and who justify the claim made that women's work is conscientious and thorough.

More departments were gradually added to our sphere of action. The separate trial of juvenile delinquents was strongly advocated by the council. Miss Clark and Mr. C. H. Goode were particularly keen on the introduction of Children's Courts. In this reform South Australia led the world, and in the new Act of 1896, after six years of tentative work, it became compulsory to try offenders under 18 at the Children's Court in the city and suburbs, and in the Magistrate's room in the country. The methods of organization and control vary in the different States of the Commonwealth, but on one point the six are all agreed—that dependent and delinquent children are a national asset and a national responsibility, and any forward step anywhere has every chance of being copied. The result of Children's Courts and probation has been that, while the population of the State has greatly increased, the committals to the Gaol and for penal servitude have steadily decreased, and the Boys' Reformatory has been reduced to one-third of the number in earlier days. There are, of course, many factors in all directions of social betterment, but the substitution of homes for institutions, and of probation carefully watched for summary punishment, are, in my opinion, the largest factors in, this State. The affection between children and their foster parents is often lifelong; and we see thousands who were taken from bad parents and evil environments taking their place in the industrial world, and filling it well. The movement in South Australia initiated by Miss Clark spread from State to State, and the happy thought of the President and Secretary of the Council that I should write an account of "Boarding-out and its Developments" as a memorial of her great work bore fruit in the legislation of the United Kingdom itself. A letter I received from Mr. Herbert Samuel, then Under-Secretary of State in the British Government, was gratifying, both to the council and to me:—"Home Office, Whitehall, S.W., August 5, 1907. Dear Madam—I have just read your little book on 'State Children in Australia;' and, although a stranger to you, would venture to write to thank you for the very valuable contribution you have made to the literature on the subject. The present Government in England are already engaged in promoting the more kindly and more effective methods of dealing with destitute, neglected, or delinquent children, which are already so widely adopted in South Australia. We are passing through Parliament this year a Bill to enable a system of probation officers, both paid and voluntary, to be established throughout the country, for dealing not indeed with child offenders alone, but with adult offenders also, who may be properly amenable to that treatment. And next year we propose to introduce a comprehensive Children's Bill, which has been entrusted to my charge, in which we hope to be able to include some of the reforms you have at heart. In the preparation of that Bill the experience of your colony and the account of it which you have published will be of no small assistance. Yours sincerely, Herbert Samuel."

Another department of our work for the protection of infant life, and this we took over from the Destitute Board, where some unique provisions had been initiated by Mr. James Smith. The Destitute Asylum was the last refuge of the old and incapacitated poor, but it never opened its doors to the able bodied. In the Union Workhouse in England room is always found for friendless and penniless to come there for confinement, who leave as soon as they are physically strong enough to take their burden—their little baby—in their arms and face the world again. In Adelaide these women were in 1868 divided into two classes, one for girls who had made their first slip—girls weak, but very rarely wicked—so as to separate them, from women who came for a second or third time, who were cared for with their infants in the general asylum. Mr. James Smith obtained in 1881 legislation to empower the Destitute Board to make every woman sign an agreement to remain with her infant, giving it the natural nourishment, for six months. This has saved many infant lives, and has encouraged maternal affection. The Destitute Board kept in its hands the issuing of licences, and appointed a lady to visit the babies till they were two years old, and did good work; but when that department was properly turned over to the State Children's Council there was even more vigilance exercised, and the death rate among these babies, often handicapped before birth, and always artificially fed after, was reduced to something less than the average of all babies. We have been fortunate in our chief inspectress of babies. Her character has uplifted the licensed foster mothers, and the two combined have raised the real mothers. It is surprising how few such babies are thrown on the State. The department does not pay any board or find any clothing for these infants. It, however, pays for supervision and pays for a lady doctor, so that there need be no excuse for not calling in medical assistance if it is felt to be needed. Occasionally a visitor from other States or from England is allowed as a great favour to see, not picked cases, but the ordinary run, of the homes of foster mothers, and the question, "Where and how do you get such women?" is asked. We have weeded out the inferiors, and our instructions with regard to feeding and care are so definite, and found to be so sound, that the women take a pride in the health and the beauty of the little ones; and besides they keep up the love of the real mother by the care they give them. A recent Act has raised the age of supervision of illegitimate babies from two to seven years, and this has necessitated the appointment of an additional inspectress. In South Australia baby farming has been extinguished, and in the other States legislation on similar lines has been won, and they are in process of gradually weeding out bad and doubtful foster mothers. And the foster fathers are often as fond of the babies as their wives—and as softhearted. "Did you see that the poor girl had on broken boots this weather?" said he. "Yes, it's a Pity; but we are poor folks ourselves—we can't help it," said she. "Let her off the 6/ for a fortnight, so as she can get a pair of sound boots for her feet, we'll worry through without it." And they did. The extreme solicitude of the State Children's Department, as carried out by its zealous officers, for the life and the wellbeing of their babies serves them in Public extenuation, and the children are often so pretty and engaging that they win love all round. A grown-up son in the home was very fond of little Lily. "Mother will you get Lily a cream coat, such as I see other babies wearing, and I will pay for it."

A most pathetic story I can tell of a girl respectably connected in the country, who had been cast off in disgrace, and came to town to take a place, committing her infant to a good foster mother. When he was old enough to move about, and was just trying to walk, the mother was taken dangerously ill to the Adelaide Hospital. The foster mother thought the girl's father should be sent for, and wrote to him giving her own address, but not disclosing her connection with the patient. The father of the girl came, and was told that he had better be accompanied by his informant, who could prepare the sick woman for the interview. The little boy was running about, and the old man took him on his knee while the woman got ready to go out. "You must come with us, Sonny," said she. "I can't leave you alone in the house." "A very fine little chap. Your youngest, I suppose. I can see he is a great pet." "No," said the woman slowly, "he is not my son, he is your grandson." "Good God, my grandson," Then, clasping the little fellow to his heart, he said, "I'll never part with him!" The mother recovered, and was taken home with her child and forgiven. Such is often the work of the good foster mother. In all the successes of the irresponsible committee and of the responsible State Children's Council the greatest factor has been the character of the good women who have been mothers to the little ones. The fears that only self-interest could induce them to take on the neglected and uncontrollable children were not borne out by experience, and in the ease of these babies not really illegitimate—it is the parents who deserve that title, no infant can—the mother's instinct came out very strong. At a conference of workers among dependent children, held in Adelaide in May, 1909, when all six States were represented, a Western Australian representative said that the average family home was not so good for its natural circle that it could be depended on for strangers; but our answer was that, both for the children of the State and for the babies who were not State children, we insisted on something better than the average home, and through our inspection we sought to improve it still further. We have not reached perfection by any means. When we begin to think we have, we are sure to fall back. Another good office the State Children's Department fills is that of advice gratis. One of the most striking chapters in Gen. Booth's "Darkest England" dealt with the helplessness of the poor and the ignorant in the face of difficulties, of injustice, and of extortion. When I was in Chicago in 1893 I saw that the first university settlement, that of Hull House, presided over by Miss Jane Addams (St. Jane some of her friends call her) was the centre to is which the poor American, German, Italian, or other alien went for advice as well as practical help. A word in season was often of more value than dollars. To be told what to do or what not to do at a crisis when decision is so important may be salvation for the pocket or for the character.