CHAPTER XII.

PREACHING, FRIENDS, AND WRITING.

My life now became more interesting and varied. A wider field for my journalistic capabilities was open to me, and I also took part in the growth of education, both spiritual and secular. The main promoters of the ambitious literary periodical The Melbourne Review, to which I became a contributor, were Mr. Henry Gyles Turner (the banker), Mr. Alexander Sutherland, M.A. (author of "The History of Australia" and several other books), and A. Patchett Martin (the litterateur). It lived for nine years, and produced a good deal of creditable writing, but it never was able to pay its contributors, because it never attained such a circulation as would attract advertisements. The reviews and magazines of the present day depend on advertisements. They cheapen the price so as to gain a circulation, which advertisers cater for. I think my second article was on the death of Sir Richard Hanson (one of the original South Australian Literary Society, which met in London before South Australia existed). At the time of his death he was Chief Justice. He was the author of two books of Biblical criticism—"The Jesus of History" and "Paul and the Primitive Church"—and I undertook to deal with his life and work. About that time there was one of those periodic outbursts of Imperialism in the Australian colonies—not popular or general, but among politicians—on the question of how the colonies could obtain practical recognition in the Legislature of the United Kingdom. Each of the colonies felt that Downing street inadequately represented its claims and its aspirations, and there were several articles in "The Melbourne Review" suggesting that these colonies should be allowed to send members to the House of Commons. This, I felt, would be inadmissible; for, unless we were prepared to bear our share of the burdens, we had no right to sit in the taxing Assembly of the United Kingdom. The only House in which the colonies, small or great, could be represented was the House of Lords; and it appeared to me that, with a reformed House of Lords, this would be quite practicable. An article in Fraser's Magazine, "Why not the Lords, too?" had struck me much, and the lines on which it ran greatly resemble those laid down by Lord Rosebery for lessening in number and improving in character the unwieldy hereditary House of Peers; but neither that writer nor Lord Rosebery grasped the idea that I made prominent in an article I wrote for The Review, which was that the reduction of the peers to 200, or any other number ought to be made on the principle of proportional representation, because otherwise the majority of the peers, being Conservative, an election on ordinary lines would result in a selection of the most extreme Conservatives in the body. My mother had pointed out to me that the 16 representative Scottish peers elected by those who have not a seat as British peers, for the duration of each Parliament, were the most Tory of the Tories, and that the same could be said of the 28 representative peers for Ireland elected for life. So, though the House of Lords contains a respectable minority of Liberals, under no system of exclusively majority representation could any of them be chosen among the 200. I had the same idea of life peers to be added from the ranks of the professions, of science, and of literature, unburdened by the weight and cost of an hereditary title, that Lord Rosebery has; and into such a body I thought that representatives of the great self-governing colonies could enter, so that information about our resources, our politics, and our sociology might be available, and might permeate the press. But, greatly to my surprise, my article was sent back, but was afterwards accepted by Fraser's Magazine. This was better for me, for what would have been published for nothing in The Melbourne Review brought me 8/15/0 from a good English magazine. I continued to write for this review, until it ceased to exist, in 1885, literary and political articles. The former included a second one on "George Eliot's Life and Work," and one on "Honore de Balzac," which many of my friends thought my best literary effort.

It was through Miss Martha Turner that I was introduced to her brother and to The Melbourne Review. She was at that time pastor of the Unitarian Church in Melbourne. She had during the long illness of the Rev. Mr. Higginson helped her brother with the services. At first she wrote sermons for him to deliver, but on some occasions when he was indisposed she read her own compositions. Fine reader as Mr. H. G. Turner is he did not come up to her, and especially he could not equal her in the presentment of her own thoughts. The congregation on the death of Mr. Higginson asked Miss Turner to accept the pastorate. She said she could conduct the services, but she absolutely declined to do the pastoral duties—visiting especially. She was licensed to conduct marriage services and baptized (or, as we call it, consecrated) children to the service of Almighty God and to the service of man. During the absence of our pastor for a long holiday in England Mr. C. L. Whitham afterwards an education inspector, took his place for two years, and he arranged for an exchange of three weeks with Miss Turner. She is the first woman I ever heard in the pulpit. I was thrilled by her exquisite voice, by her earnestness, and by her reverence. I felt as I had never felt before that if women are excluded from the Christian pulpit you shut out more than half of the devoutness that is in the world. Reading George Eliot's description of Dinah Morris preaching Methodisim on the green at Hayslope had prepared me in a measure, but when I heard a highly educated and exceptionally able woman conducting the services all through, and especially reading the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments with so much intelligence that they seemed to take on new meaning, I felt how much the world had been losing for so many centuries. She twice exchanged with Adelaide—the second time when Mr. Woods had returned—and it was the beginning to me of a close friendship.

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest flattery; and when a similar opportunity was offered to me during an illness of Mr. Woods, when no layman was available, I was first asked to read a sermon of Martineau's and then I suggested that I might give something of my own. My first original sermon was on "Enoch and Columbus," and my second on "Content, discontent, and uncontent." I suppose I have preached more than a hundred times, in my life, mostly in the Wakefield Street pulpit; but in Melbourne and Sydney I am always asked for help; and when I went to America in 1893-4 I was offered seven pulpits—one in Toronto, Canada, and six in the United States. The preparation of my sermons—for, after the first one I delivered, they were always original—has always been a joy and delight to me, for I prefer that my subjects as well as their treatment shall be as humanly helpful as it is possible to make them. In Sydney particularly I have preached to fine audiences. On one occasion I remember preaching in a large hall, as the Unitarian Church could not have held the congregation. It was during the campaign that Mrs. Young and I conducted in Sydney—in 1900, and we had spent the day—a delightful one—with the present Sir George and Lady Reid at their beautiful home at Strathfield, and returned in time to take the evening service at Sydney. I spoke on the advantages of international peace, and illustrated my discourse with arguments, drawn from the South African War, which was then in progress. I seized the opportunity afforded me of speaking some plain home truths on the matter. I was afterwards referred to by The Sydney Bulletin as "the gallant little old lady who had more moral courage in her little finger than all the Sydney ministers had in their combined anatomies." For one of my sermons I wrote an original parable which pleased my friends so much that I include it in the account of my life's work. "And it came to pass after the five days of Creation which were periods of unknown length of time that God took the soul, the naked soul, with which He was to endow the highest of his creatures—into Eden to look with him on the work which He had accomplished. And the Soul could see, could hear, could understand, though there were neither eyes, nor ears, nor limbs, nor bodily organs, to do its bidding. And God said, 'Soul, thou shalt have a body as these creatures, that thou seest around thee have. Thou art to be king, and rule over them all. Thy mission is to subdue the earth, and make it fruitful and more beautiful than it is even now, in thus its dawn. Which of all these living creatures wouldst thou resemble?' And the Soul looked, and the Soul listened, and the Soul understood. The beauty of the birds first attracted him and their songs were sweet, and their loving care of their young called forth a response in the Prophetic Soul. But the sweet singers could not subdue the earth—nay, even the strongest voice could not. Then the Soul gazed on the lion in his strength; on the deer in his beauty. He saw the large-eyed bull with the cow by his side, licking her calf. The stately horse, the huge elephant, the ungainly camel—could any of these subdue the earth? He looked down, and they made it shake with their heavy tread, but the Soul knew that the earth could not be subdued by them. Then he saw a pair of monkeys climbing a tree—the female had a little one in her arms. Where the bird had wings, and the beasts four legs planted on the ground, the monkeys had arms, and, at the end of each, hands, with five fingers; they gathered nuts and cracked them, and picked out the kernels, throwing the shells away—the mother caressed her young one with gentle fingers. The Soul saw also the larger ape with its almost upright form. 'Ah!' sighed the Soul, 'they are not beautiful like the other creatures, neither are they so strong as many of them. But their forelimbs, with hands and fingers to grasp with, are what I need to subdue the earth, for they will be the servants who can best obey my will. Let me stand upright and gaze upward, and this is the body that I choose.' And God said, 'Soul, thou hast chosen well, Thou shalt be larger and stronger than these creatures thou seest thou shalt stand upright, and look upward and onward. And the Soul can create beauty for itself, when it shines through the body.' And it was so, and Adam stood erect and gave names to all other creatures."

In the seventies the old education system, or want of system, was broken up, and a complete department of public instruction was constructed. Mr. J. A. Hartley, head master of Prince Alfred College, was placed at the head of it, and a vigorous policy was adopted. When the Misses Davenport Hill came out to visit aunt and cousins, I visited with them and Miss Clark the Grote Street Model School, and I was delighted with the new administration. I hoped that the instruction of the children of the people would attract the poor gentlewomen who were so badly paid as governesses in families or in schools; but my hope has not been at all adequately fulfilled. The Register had been most earnest in its desire for a better system of public education. The late Mr. John Howard Clark, its then editor, wanted some articles on the education of girls, and he applied to me to do them, and I wrote two leading articles on the subject, and another on the "Ladder of Learning." from the elementary school to the university, as exemplified in my native country where ambitious lads cultivated literature on a little oatmeal. For an Adelaide University was in the air, and took form owing to the benefactions of Capt. (afterwards Sir Walter Watson) Hughes, and Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Elder. But the opposition to Mr. Hartley, which set in soon after his appointment, and his supposed drastic methods and autocratic attitude, continued. I did not knew Mr. Hartley personally, but I knew he had been an admirable head teacher, and the most valuable member of the Education Board which preceded the revolution. I knew, too, that the old school teachers were far inferior to what were needed for the new work, and that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. A letter which I wrote to Mr. Hartley, saying that I desired to help him in any way in my power, led to a friendship which lasted till his lamented death in 1896. I fancied at the time that my aid did him good, but I think now that the opposition had spent its force before I put in my oar by some letters to the press. South Australians became afterwards appreciative of the work done by Mr. Hartley, and proud of the good position this State took in matters educational among the sister States under the Southern Cross.

It was due to Mrs. Webster's second visit to Adelaide to exchange with Mr. Woods that I made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. E. Barr Smith. They went to the church and were shown into my seat, and Mrs. Smith asked me to bring the eloquent preacher to Torrens Park to dine there. I discovered that they had long wanted to know me, but I was out of society. I recollect afterwards going to the office to see Mr. Smith on some business or other, when he was out, and meeting Mr. Elder instead. He pressed on me the duty of going to see Mrs. Black, a lady from Edinburgh, who had come out with her sons and daughter. Mr. Barr Smith came in, and his brother-in-law said, "I have just been telling Miss Spence she should go and call on the Blacks." "Tom," said Mr. Barr Smith, "we have been just 20 years making the acquaintance of Miss Spence. About the year 1899 Miss Spence will be dropping in on the Blacks." What a house Torrens Park was for books. There was no other customer of the book shops equal to the Torrens Park family. Rich men and women often buy books for themselves, and for rare old books they will give big prices; but the Barr Smiths bought books in sixes and in dozens for the joy of giving them where they would be appreciated. On my literary side Mrs. Barr Smith, a keen critic herself, fitted in with me admirably, and what I owed to her in the way of books for about 10 years cannot be put on paper, and in my journalistic work she delighted. Other friendships, both literary and personal, were formed in the decade which started the elementary schools and the University. The first Hughes professor of English literature was the Rev. John Davidson of Chalmers Church, married to Harriet, daughter of Hugh Miller, the self-taught ecologist and journalist.

On the day of the inauguration of the University the Davidsons asked Miss Clark and myself to go with them, and there I met Miss Catherine Mackay (now Mrs. Fred Martin), from Mount Gambier. I at first thought her the daughter of a wealthy squatter of the south-east, but when I found she was a litterateur trying to make a living by her pen, bringing out a serial tale, "Bohemian Born," and writing occasional articles, I drew to her at once. So long as the serial tale lasted she could hold her own; but no one can make a living at occasional articles in Australia, and she became a clerk in the Education Office, but still cultivated literature in her leisure hours. She has published two novels—"An Australian Girl" and "The Silent Sea"—which so good a judge as F. W. H. Myers pronounced to be on the highest level ever reached in Australian fiction, and in that opinion I heartily concur. I take a very humble second place beside her, but in the seventies I wrote "Gathered In," which I believed to be my best novel—the novel into which I put the most of myself, the only novel I wrote with tears of emotion. Mrs. Oliphant says that Jeanie Deans is more real to her than any of her own creations, and probably it is the same with me, except for this one work. From an old diary of the fifties, when my first novels were written I take this extract:—"Queer that I who have such a distinct idea of what I approve in flesh-and-blood men should only achieve in pen and ink a set of impossible people, with an absurd muddy expression of gloom, instead of sublime depth as I intended. Men novelists' women are as impossible creations as my men, but there is this difference—their productions satisfy them, mine fail to satisfy me." But in my last novel—still unpublished—felt quite satisfied that I had at last achieved my ambition to create characters that stood out distinctly and real. Miss Clark took the MS. to England, but she could not get either Bentley or Smith Elder, or Macmillan to accept it.

On the death of Mr. John Howard Clark, which took place at this time, Mr. John Harvey Finlayson was left to edit The Register, and I became a regular outside contributor to The Register and The Observer. He desired to keep up and if possible improve the literary side of the papers, and felt that the loss of Mr. Clark might be in some measure made up if I give myself wholeheartedly to the work. Leading articles were to be written at my own risk. If they suited the policy of the paper they would be accepted, otherwise not. What a glorious opening for my ambition and for my literary proclivities came to me in July, 1878, when I was in my fifty-third year! Many leading articles were rejected, but not one literary or social article. Generally these last appeared in both daily and weekly papers. I recollect the second original social article I wrote was on "Equality as an influence on society and manners," suggested by Matthew Arnold. The much-travelled Smythe, then, I think, touring with Charles Clark, wrote to Mr. Finlayson from Wallaroo thus:—"In this dead-alive place, where one might fire a mitrailleuse down the principal street without hurting anybody, I read this delightful article in yesterday's Register. When we come again to Adelaide, and we collect a few choice spirits, be sure to invite the writer of this article to join us." I felt as if the round woman had got at last into the round hole which fitted her; and in my little study, with my books and my pigeon holes, and my dear old mother sitting with her knitting on her rocking chair at the low window, I had the knowledge that she was interested in all I did. I generally read the MS to her before it went to the office. What is more remarkable, perhaps, is that the excellent maid who was with us for 12 years, picked out everything of mine that was in the papers and read it. A series of papers called "Some Social Aspects of Early Colonial Life" I contributed under the pseudonym of "A Colonist of 1839." From 1878 till 1893, when I went round the world via America, I held the position of outside contributor on the oldest newspaper in the State, and for these 14 years I had great latitude. My friend Dr. Garran, then editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, accepted reviews and articles from me. Sometimes I reviewed the same books for both, but I wrote the articles differently, and made different quotations, so that I scarcely think any one could detect the same hand in them; but generally they were different books and different subjects, which I treated. I tried The Australasian with a short story, "Afloat and Ashore," and with a social article on "Wealth, Waste, and Want." I contributed to The Melbourne Review, and later to The Victorian Review, which began by paying well, but filtered out gradually. I found journalism a better paying business for me than novel writing, and I delighted in the breadth of the canvas on which I could draw my sketches of books and of life. I believe that my work on newspapers and reviews is more characteristic of me, and intrinsically better work than what I have done in fiction; but when I began to wield the pen, the novel was the line of least resistance. When I was introduced in 1894 to Mrs. Croly, the oldest woman journalist in the United States, as an Australian journalist, I found that her work, though good enough, was essentially woman's work, dress, fashions, functions, with educational and social outlooks from the feminine point of view. My work might show the bias of sex, but it dealt with the larger questions which were common to humanity; and when I recall the causes which I furthered, and which in some instances I started, I feel inclined to magnify the office of the anonymous contributor to the daily press. And I acknowledge not only the kindness of friends who put some of the best new books in my way, but the large-minded tolerance of the Editors of The Register, who gave me such a free hand in the treatment of books, of men, and of public questions.



CHAPTER XIII.

MY WORK FOR EDUCATION.

I was the first woman appointed on a Board of Advice under the Education Department, and found the work interesting. The powers of the board were limited to an expenditure of 5 pounds for repairs without applying to the department and to interviewing the parents of children who had failed to attend the prescribed number of days, as well as those who pleaded poverty as an excuse for the non-payment of fees. I always felt that the school fees were a heavy burden on the poor, and rejoiced accordingly when free education was introduced into South Australia. This was the second State to adopt this great reform, Victoria preceding it by a few years. I objected to the payment of fees on another ground. I felt they bore heavily on the innocent children themselves through the notion of caste which was created in the minds of those who paid fees to the detriment of their less fortunate school companions. And again, education that is compulsory should be free. Other women have since become members of School Boards, but I was the pioneer of that branch of public work for women in this State. It is a privilege that American women have been fighting for for many years—to vote for and to be eligible to sit on School Boards. In many of the States this has been won to their great advantage. In this present year of 1910 Mrs. Ella, Flagg Young, at the age of 65, has been elected by the Chigago Board, Director of the Education of that great city of over two millions of inhabitants at a salary of 2,000 pounds a year, with a male university professor as an assistant. At an age when we in South Australia are commanding our teachers to retire, in Chicago, which is said by Foster Fraser to cashier men at 40, this elderly woman has entered into her great power.

It is characteristic of me that I like to do thoroughly what I undertake to do at all, and when, on one occasion I had not received the usual summons to attend a board meeting, I complained of the omission to the Chairman. "I do not want," I said, "to be a merely ornamental member of this board. I want to go to all the meetings." He replied, courteously, "It is the last thing that we would say of you, Miss Spence, that you are ornamental!" It was half a minute before he discovered that he had put his disclaimer in rather a different form from what he had intended, and he joined in the burst of laughter which followed. Another amusing contretemps occurred when the same gentleman and I were visiting the parents who had pleaded for exemption from the payment of fees. At one house there was a grown-up daughter who had that morning left the service of the gentleman's mother—a fact enlarged upon by my companion during the morning's drive. "Why is your eldest daughter out of a place?" was the first question he put to the woman. "She might be earning good wages, and be able to help you pay the fees." "Oh!" came the unexpected reply, "she had to leave old Mrs. —— this morning; she was that mean there was no living in the house with her!" Knowing her interlocutor only as the man in authority, the unfortunate woman scarcely advanced her cause by her plain speaking, and I was probably the only member of the trio who appreciated the situation. I am sure many people who were poorer than this mother paid the fees rather than suffer the indignity of such cross-questioning by the school visitors and the board—an unfortunate necessity of the system, which disappeared with the abolition of school fees.

It had been suggested by the Minister of Education of that period that the children attending the State schools should be instructed in the duties of citizenship, and that they should be taught something of the laws under which they lived, and I was commissioned to write a short and pithy statement of the case. It was to be simple enough for intelligent children in the fourth class; 11 or 12—it was to lead from the known to the unknown—it might include the elements of political economy and sociology—it might make use of familiar illustrations from the experience of a new country—but it must not be long. It was not very easy to satisfy myself and Mr. Hartley—who was a severe critic—but when the book of 120 pages was completed he was satisfied. A preface I wrote for the second edition—the first 5,000 copies being insufficient for the requirements of the schools—will give some idea of the plan of the work:—"In writing this little book, I have aimed less at symmetrical perfection than at simplicity of diction, and such arrangement as would lead from the known to the unknown, by which the older children in our public schools might learn not only the actual facts about the laws they live under, but also some of the principles which underlie all law." The reprinting gave me an opportunity to reply to my critics that "political economy, trades unions, insurance companies, and newspapers" were outside the scope of the laws we live under. But I thought that in a new State where the optional duties of the Government are so numerous, it was of great importance for the young citizen to understand economic principles. As conduct is the greater part of life, and morality, not only the bond of social union, but the main source of individual happiness, I took the ethical part of the subject first, and tried to explain that education was of no value unless it was used for good purposes. As without some wealth, civilization was impossible, I next sought to show that national and individual wealth depends on the security that is given by law, and on the industry and the thrift which that security encourages. Land tenure is of the first importance in colonial prosperity, and consideration of the land revenue and the limitations as to its expenditure led me to the necessity for taxation and the various modes of levying it. Taxation led me to the power which imposes, collects, and expends it. This involved a consideration of those representative institutions which make the Government at once the master and the servant of the people. Under this Government our persons and our prosperity are protected by a system of criminal, civil, and insolvent law—each considered in its place. Although not absolutely included in the laws we live under, I considered that providence, and its various outlets in banks, savings banks, joint stock companies, friendly societies, and trades unions, were matters too important to be left unnoticed; and also those influences which shape character quite as much as statute laws—public opinion, the newspaper, and amusements. As the use of my little book was restricted solely to school hours, my hope that the parents might be helped and encouraged by its teaching was doomed to disappointment. But the children of 30 years ago, when "The Laws We Live Under" was first published, are the men and women of to-day, and who shall say but that among them are to be found some at least worthy and true citizens, who owe to my little book their first inspiration to "hitch their wagon to a star." Last year an enthusiastic young Swedish teacher and journalist was so taken with this South Australian little handbook of civics that he urged on me the duty of bringing it up to date, and embracing women's suffrage, the relations of the States to the Commonwealth, as well as the industrial legislation which is in many ways peculiar to Australia, but although those in authority were sympathetic no steps have been taken for its reproduction. Identified as I had been for so many years with elementary education in South Australia, my mind was well prepared to applaud the movement in favour of the higher education of poorer children of both sexes by the foundation of bursaries and scholarships, and the opening up of the avenues of learning to women by admitting them to University degrees. Victoria was the first to take this step, and all over the Commonwealth the example has been followed. I am, however, somewhat disappointed that University women are not more generally progressive in their ideas. They have won something which I should have been very glad of, but which was quite out of reach. All opportunities ought to be considered as opportunities for service. As my brother David regarded the possession of honours and wealth as demanding sacrifice for the common good, so I regarded special knowledge and special culture as means for advancing the culture of all. It is said to be human nature when special privileges or special gifts are used only for egoistic ends; but the complete development of the human being demands that altruistic ideas should also be cultivated. We see that in China an aristocracy of letters—for it is through passing difficult examinations in old literature that the ruling classes are appointed—is no protection to the poor and ignorant from oppression or degradation. It is true that the classics in China are very old, but so are the literatures of Greece and Rome, on which so many university degrees are founded; and it ought to be impressed upon all seekers after academic honours that personal advantage is not the be-all and end-all of their pursuits. In our democratic Commonwealth, although there are some lower titles bestowed by the Sovereign on colonists more or less distinguished, these are not hereditary, so that an aristocracy is not hereditary. There may be an upper class, based on landed estate or one on business success, or one on learning, but all tend to become conservative as conservatism is understood in Australia. Safety is maintained by the free rise from the lower to the higher. But all the openings to higher education offered in high school and university do not tempt the working man's children who want to earn wages as soon as the law lets them go to work. Nor do they tempt their parents to their large share of the sacrifice which young Scotch lads and even American lads make to get through advanced studies. The higher education is still a sort of preserve of the well-to-do, and when one thinks of how greatly this is valued it seems a pity that it is not open to the talents, to the industry, to the enthusiasm of all the young of both sexes. But one exception I must make to the aloofness of people with degrees and professions from the preventible evils of the world, and that is in the profession that is the longest and the most exacting—the medical profession. The women doctors whom I have met in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney have a keen sense of their responsibility to the less fortunate. That probably is because medicine as now understood and practised is the most modern of the learned professions, and is more human than engineering, which is also modern. It takes us into the homes of the poor more intimately than even the clergyman, and it offers remedies and palliatives as well as advice. The law is little studied by women in Australia, but in the United States there are probably a thousand or more legal practitioners. It is the profession that I should have chosen when I was young if it had been in any way feasible. I had no bent for the medical profession, and still less for what every one thinks the most womanly of avocations—that of the trained nurse. I could nurse my own relatives more or less well, but did not distinguish myself in that way, and I could not devote myself to strangers. The manner in which penniless young men become lawyers in the United States seems impossible in Australia. Judge Lindsay, son of a ruined southern family, studied law and delivered newspapers in the morning, worked in a lawyer's office through the day, and acted as janitor at night. The course appears to be shorter, and probably less Latin and Greek were required in a western State than here. But during the long vacation in summer, students go as waiters in big hotels at seaside or other health resorts, or take up some other seasonal trade. All the Columbian guards at the Chicago Exhibition were students. They kept order, they gave directions, they wheeled invalids in bath chairs, and they earned all that was needed, for their next winter's course. In the long high school holidays youths and maidens who are poor and ambitious work for money. I have seen fairly well-paid professors who went back to the father's farm and worked hard all harvest time—and students always did so. It appears easier in America to get a job for three months' vacation than in England or Australia, and the most surprising thing about an American is his versatility. Teaching is with most American men only a step to something better, so that almost all elementary and the far greater proportion of high school teaching is in the hands of women. In Australia our male teachers have to spend so many years before they are fully equipped that they rarely leave the profession. The only check on the supply is that the course is so long and laborious that the youth prefers an easy clerkship. Women, in spite of the chance of marriage, enter the profession in the United States in greater numbers, and as the scale of salaries is by no means equal pay for equal work, except in New York, money is saved by employing women. I think that it is the student of arts (that English title which is as vague and unmeaning as the Scottish one of humanities)—student of ancient classical literature—who, whether man or woman, has least perception of the modern spirit or sympathy with the sorrows of the world. With all honour to the classical authors, there are two things in which they were deficient—the spirit of broad humanity and the sense of humour. All ancient literature is grave—nay, sad. It is also aristocratic for learning was the possession of the few. While writing this narrative I came upon a notable thing done by Miss Crystal Eastman, a member of the New York Bar, and Secretary of the State Commission on Employers' Liability. It is difficult for us to understand how so many good things are blocked, not only in the Federal Government, but in the separate States, by the written constitutions. In Great Britain the Constitution consists of unwritten principles embodied either in Parliamentary statutes or in the common law, and yields to any Act which Parliament may pass, and the judiciary can impose no veto on it. This is one reason why England is so far ahead of the United States in labour legislation. Miss Eastman was the principal speaker at the annual meeting in January, 1910, of the New York State Bar Association. She is a trained economic investigator as well as a lawyer, and her masterly analysis of conditions under the present liability law held close attention, and carried conviction to many present that a radical change was necessary. The recommendations for the statute were to make limited compensation for all accidents, except those wilfully caused by the victim, compulsory on all employers. With regard to dangerous occupations the person who profits by them should bear the greatest share of the loss through accident. As for the constitutionality of such legislation Miss Eastman said—"If our State Constitution cannot be interpreted so as to recognise such an idea of justice then I think we should amend our Constitution. I see no reason why we should stand in such awe of a document which expressly provides for its own revision every ten years." The evils against which this brave woman lawyer contends are real and grievous. Working people in America who suffer from injury are unmercifully exploited by the ambulance-chasing lawyers. Casualty insurance companies are said to be weary of being diverted from their regular business to become a mere fighting force in the Courts to prevent the injured or the dependents from getting any compensation. The long-suffering public is becoming aware that the taxpayers are compelled to bear the burden of supporting the pitifully great multitude of incapacitated or rendered dependent because of industrial accident or occupational diseases. Employers insure their liability, and the poor man has to fight an insurance company, and at present reform is blocked on the plea that it is unconstitutional. There are difficulties even in Australia, and to enquire into such difficulties would be good work for women lawyers.



CHAPTER XIV.

SPECULATION, CHARITY, AND A BOOK.

In the meantime my family history went on. My nephew was sent to the Northern Territory to take over the branch of the English and Scottish Bank at Palmerston, and he took his sister from school to go with him and stay three months in the tropics. He was only 21 at the time. Four years after he went to inspect the branch, and took his sister with him again. I think she loved Port Darwin more than he did, and she always stood up for the climate. South Australia did a great work in building, unaided by any other Australian State, the telegraph line from Port Darwin to Adelaide, and at one time it was believed that rich goldfields were to be opened in this great empty land, which the British Government had handed over to South Australia, because Stuart had been the first to cross the island continent, and the handful of South Australian colonists bad connected telegraphically the north and the south. The telegraph building had been contracted for by Darwent and Dalwood, and my brother, through the South Australian Bank, was helping to finance them. That was in 1876-7. This was the first, but not the last by any means, of enterprises which contractors were not able to carry out in this State, either from taking a big enterprise at too low a rate or from lack of financial backing. The Government, as in the recent cases of the Pinnaroo Railway and the Outer Harbour, had to complete the halfdone work as the direct employer of labour and the direct purchaser of materials. A great furore for goldmining in the Northern Territory arose, and people in England bought city allotments in Palmerston, which was expected to become the queen city of North Australia, Port Darwin is no whit behind Sydney Harbour in beauty and capacity. The navies of the world could ride safely in its waters. A railway of 150 miles in length, the first section of the great transcontinental line, which was to extend from Palmerston to Port Augusta, was built to connect Pine Creek, where there was gold to be found, with the seaboard. South Australia was more than ever a misnomer for this State. Victoria lay more to the south than our province, and now that we stretched far inside the tropics the name seemed ridiculous. My friend Miss Sinnett suggested Centralia as the appropriate name for the State, which by this gift was really the central State; but in the present crisis, when South Australia finds the task of keeping the Northern Territory white too arduous and too costly, and is offering it on handsome terms to the Commonwealth, Centralia might not continue to be appropriate. Our northern possession has cost South Australia much. The sums of money sunk in prospecting for gold and other metals have been enormous, and at present there are more Chinese there than Europeans. In the early days, when the Wrens were there, Eleanor was surprised when their wonderful Chinese cook came to her and said, "Missie, I go along a gaol to-morrow. You take Ah Kei. He do all light till I go out!" The cook had been tried and condemned for larceny, but he was allowed to retain his situation till the last hour. Instead of being kept in gaol pending his trial he earned his wages and did his work. He had no desire to escape. He liked Palmerston and the bank, and he went back to the latter when released. He was an incorrigible thief, and got into trouble again; but as a cook he was superlative.

That decade of the eighties was a most speculative time all over Australia and New Zealand. I was glad that leaving the English and Scottish Bank enabled my brother to go into political and official life, but it also allowed him to speculate far beyond what he could have done if he had been manager of a bank. Everybody speculated—in mines, in land, and in leases. I was earning by my pen a very decent income, and I spent it, sometimes wisely and sometimes foolishly. I could be liberal to church and to good causes. I was able to keep a dear little State child at school for two years after the regulation age, and I was amply repaid by seeing her afterwards an honoured wife and mother, able to assist her children and their companions with their lessons. I helped some lame dogs over the stile. One among them was a young American of brilliant scholastic attainments, who was the victim of hereditary alcoholism. His mother, a saintly and noble prohibitionist worker, whom I afterwards met in America, had heard of me, and wrote asking me to keep a watchful eye on her boy. This I did for about 12 months, and found him employment. He held a science degree, and was an authority on mineralogy, metallurgy, and kindred subjects. During this speculative period he persuaded me to plunge (rather wildly for me) in mining shares. I plunged to the extent of 500 pounds, and I owe it to the good sense and practical ability of my nephew that I lost no more heavily than I did, for he paid 100 pounds to let me off my bargain.

My protege continued to visit me weekly, and we wrote to one another once a week or oftener. The books I lent to him I know to this day by their colour and the smell of tobacco. I wrote to his mother regularly, and consulted with his good friend, Mr. Waterhouse, over what was best to be done. One bad outburst he had when he had got some money through me to pay off liabilities. I recollect his penitent, despairing confession, with the reference to Edwin Arnold's poem

He who died at Azun gave This to those who dug his grave.

The time came when I felt I could hold him no longer, although that escapade was forgiven, and I determined to send him to his mother—not without misgivings about what she might have still to suffer. He wrote to me occasionally. His health was never good, and I attribute the craving for drink and excitement a good deal to physical causes; but at the same time I am sure that he could have withstood it by a more resolute will. The will is the character—it is the real man. When people say that the first thing in education is to break the will, they make a radical mistake. Train the will to work according to the dictates of an enlightened conscience, for it is all we have to trust to for the stability of character. My poor lad called me his Australian mother. When I saw his real mother, I wondered more and more what sort of a husband she had, or what atavism Edward drew from to produce a character so unlike hers. I heard nothing from herself of what she went through, but from her friends I gathered that he had several outbreaks, and cost her far more than she could afford. She paid everything that he owed in Adelaide, except her debt to me, but that I was repaid after her death in 1905, and she always felt that I had been a true friend to her wayward son. I recollect one day my friend coming on his weekly visit with a face of woe to tell me he had seen a man in dirt and rags, with half a shirt, who had been well acquainted with Charles Dickens and other notables in London. My friend had fed him and clothed him, but he wanted to return to England to rich friends. I wrote to a few good folk, and we raised the money and sent the wastrel to the old country. How grateful he appeared to be, especially to the kind people who had taken him in; but he never wrote a line. We never heard from him again. Years afterwards I wrote to his brother-in-law, asking where the object of our charity now was, if he were still alive. The reply was that his ingratitude did not surprise the writer—that he was a hopeless drunkard, a remittance man, whom the family had to ship off as soon as possible when our ill-judged kindness sent him to England. At that time he was in Canada, but it was not worth while to give any address. When Mr. Bowyear started the Charity Organization Society in Adelaide, he said I was no good as a visitor; I was too credulous, and had not half enough of the detective in me. But I had not much faith in this remittance man.

I have been strongly tempted to omit altogether the next book which I wrote; but, as this is to be a sincere narrative of my life and its work, I must pierce the veil of anonymity and own up to "An Agnostic's Progress." I had been impressed with the very different difficulties the soul of man has to encounter nowadays from those so triumphantly overcome by Christian in the great work of John Bunyan in the first part of "The Pilgrim's Progress." He cannot now get out of the Slough of Despond by planting his foot on the stepping stones of the Promises. He cannot, like Hopeful, pluck from his bosom the Key of Promise which opens every lock in Doubting Castle when the two pilgrims are shut in it by Giant Despair, when they are caught trespassing on his grounds. Even assured Christians, we know, may occasionally trespass on these grounds of doubt; but the weapons of modern warfare are not of the seventeenth century. The Interpreter's House in the old allegory dealt only with things found in the Bible, the only channel of revelation to John Bunyan. To the modern pilgrim God reveals Himself in Nature, in art, in literature, and in history. The Interpreter's Hand had to do with all these things. Vanity Fair is not a place through which all pilgrims must pass as quickly as possible, shutting their eyes and stopping their ears so that they should neither see nor hear the wicked things that are done and said there. Vanity Fair is the world in which we all have to live and do our work well, or neglect it. Pope and Pagan are not the old giants who used to devour pilgrims, but who can now only gnash their teeth at them in impotent rage. They are live forces, quite active, and with agents and supporters alert to capture souls. Of all the influences which affected for evil my young life I perhaps resented most Mrs. Sherwood's "Infant's Progress." There were three children in it going from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City by the route laid down by John Bunyan; but they were handicapped even more severely than the good Christian himself with his heavy burden—for that fell off his back at the first sight of the Cross and Him who was nailed to it, accepted by the eye of Faith as the one Sacrifice for the sins of the world—for the three little ones, Humble Mind, Playful, and Peace, were accompanied always and everywhere by an imp called Inbred Sin, who never ceased to tempt them to evil.

The doctrine of innate human depravity is one of the most paralysing dogmas that human fear invented or priestcraft encouraged. I did not think of publishing "An Agnostic's Progress" at first. I wrote it to relieve my own mind. I wanted to satisfy myself that reverent agnostics were by no means materialists; that man's nature might or might not be consciously immortal, but it was spiritual; that in the duties which lay before each of us towards ourselves and towards our fellow-creatures, there was scope for spiritual energy and spiritual emotion. I was penetrated by Browning's great idea expressed over and over again—the expansion of Paul's dictum that faith is not certainty, but a belief without sufficient proof, a belief which leads to right action and to self-sacrifice. Of the 70 years of life which one might hope to live and work in, I had no mean idea. I asked in the newspaper, "Is life so short?" and answered. "No." I expanded and spiritualized the idea in a sermon, and I again answered emphatically "No." I saw the continuation and the expansion of true ideas by succeeding generations. To the question put sometimes peevishly, "Is life worth living?" I replied with equal emphasis, "Yes." My mother told me of old times. I recalled half a century of progress, and I hoped the forward movement would continue. I read the manuscript of "An Agnostic's Progress" to Mr. and Mrs. Barr Smith, and they thought so well of it that they offered to take it to England on one of their many visits to the old country, where they had no doubt it would find a publisher. Trubner's reader reported most favourably of the book, and we thought there was an immediate prospect of its publication; but Mr. Trubner died, and the matter was not taken up by his successor, and my friends did what I had expressly said they were not to do, and had it printed and published at their own expense. There were many printer's errors in it, but it was on the whole well reviewed, though it did not sell well. The Spectator joined issue with me on the point that it is only through the wicket gate of Doubt that we can come to any faith that is of value; but I am satisfied that I took the right stand there. My mother was in no way disquieted or disturbed by my writing the book, and few of my friends read it or knew about it. I still appeared so engrossed with work on The Register and The Observer that my time was quite well enough accounted for. I tried for a prize of 100 pounds offered by The Sydney Mail with a novel called "Handfasted," but was not successful, for the judge feared that it was calculated to loosen the marriage tie—it was too socialistic and consequently dangerous.



CHAPTER XV.

JOURNALISM AND POLITICS.

In reviewing books I took the keenest Interest in the "Carlyle Biographies and Letters," because my mother recollected Jeanie Welch as a child, and her father was called in always for my grandfather Brodie's illnesses. I was also absorbed in the "Life and Letters of George Eliot." The Barr Smiths gave me the "Life and Letters of Balzac," and many of his books in French, which led me to write both for The Register and for The Melbourne Review. I also wrote "A last word," which was lost by The Centennial in Sydney when it died out. It was also from Mrs. Barr Smith that I got so many of the works of Alphonse Daudet in French, which enabled me to give a rejoinder to Marcus Clark's assertion that Balzac was a French Dickens. Indeed, looking through my shelves, I see so many books which suggested articles and criticisms which were her gifts that I always connect her with my journalistic career.

Many people have consulted me about publishing poems, novels, and essays. As I was known to have actually got books published in England, and to be a professional journalist and reviewer, I dare say some of those who applied to me for encouragement thought I was actuated by literary jealousy; but people are apt to think they have a plot when they have only an incident, or two or three incidents; and many who can write clever and even brilliant letters have no idea of the construction of a story that will arrest and sustain the reader's attention. The people who consulted me all wanted money for their work. They had such excellent uses for money. They had too little. They were neither willing nor able to bear the cost of publication, and it was absolutely necessary that their work should be good enough for a business man to undertake it. I am often surprised that I found English publishers myself, and the handicap of distance and other things is even greater now. If stories are excessively Australian, they lose the sympathies of the bulk of the public. If they are mildly Australian, the work is thought to lack distinctiveness. Great genius can overcome these things, but great genius is rare everywhere. Except for my friend Miss Mackay (Mrs. F. Martin), I know no Australian novelist of genius, and her work is only too rare in fiction. Mrs. Cross reaches her highest level in "The Masked Man." but she does not keep it up, though she writes well and pleasantly. Of course poetry does not pay anywhere until a great reputation is made. Poetry must be its own exceeding great reward. And yet I agree with Charles Kingsley that if you wish to cultivate a really good prose style you should begin with verse. In my teens I wrote rhymes and tried to write sonnets. I encouraged writing games among my young people, and it is surprising how much cleverness could be developed. I can write verses with ease, but very rarely could I rise to poetry; and therefore I fear I was not encouraging to the budding Australian poet.

There was a column quite outside of The Register to which I liked to contribute for love. That was "The Riddler," which appeared in The Observer and in The Evening Journal on Saturdays. It brought me in contact with Mr. William Holden, long the oldest journalist in South Australia, who revelled in statistical returns and algebraical problems and earth measurements, but who also appreciated a good charade or double acrostic. I used to give some of the ingredients for his "Christmas Mince Pie," and wrote many riddles of various sorts. My charades were not so elegant as some arranged by Miss Clark, and not so easily found out; and my double acrostics were not so subtle as those given in competition nowadays, but they were in the eighties reckoned excellent. My fame had reached the ears of Mrs. Alfred Watts (nee Giles), who spent her early colonial life on Kangaroo Island, and she asked me to write some double acrostics for the poor incurables. I stared at her in amazement. "We want to be quite well to tackle double acrostics and to have access to books. Does not Punch speak of the titled lady, eager to win a guinea prize, who gave seven volumes of Carlyle's works to seven upper servants, and asked each to search one to find a certain quotation?" "Oh," said Mrs. Watts, "I don't mean for the incurables to amuse themselves with. I mean for the benefit of the home."

In the end I prepared a book of charades and double acrostics, for the printing and binding of which Mrs. Watts paid. It was entitled "Silver Wattle," and the proceeds from the sale of this little book went to help the funds of the home. For a second volume issued for the same purpose Mrs. Strawbridge wrote some poems, Mrs. H. M. Davidson a translation of Victor Huge, Miss Clark her beautiful "Flowers of Greece," and her niece some pretty verses, which, combined with the double acrostics, and acting charades supplied by me, made an attractive volume. Mrs. Watts had something of a literary turn, which found expression in "Memories of Early Days in South Australia," a book printed for private circulation among her family and intimate friends. Dealing with the years between 1837 and 1845 it was very interesting to old colonists, particularly when they were able to identify the people mentioned, sometimes by initials and sometimes by pseudonyms. The author was herself an incurable invalid from an accident shortly after her marriage, and felt keenly for all the inmates of the Fullarton Home.

In 1877 my brother John—with whom I had never quarrelled in my life, and who helped and encouraged me in everything that I did—retired from the English, Scottish, and Australian Bank, and decided to contest a seat for the Legislative Council. It was the last occasion on which the Council was elected with the State as one district. Although he announced his candidature only the night before nomination day, and did not address a single meeting, he was elected third on the poll. He afterwards became the Chief Secretary, and later Commissioner of Public Works. He was an excellent worker on committees, and was full of ideas and suggestions. Although not a good speaker, he rejoiced in my standing on platform or in pulpit. He was nearly as democratic as I was; and when he invented the phrase "effective voting" it was from the sense that true democracy demanded not merely a chance, but a certainty, that the vote given at the poll should be effective for some one. My brother David inherited all the Conservatism of the Brodies for generations back. Greatly interested in all abstruse problems and abstract questions he had various schemes for the regeneration of mankind. Two opposing theories concerning the working of bi-cameral Legislatures supplied me with material for a Review article. One theory was intensely Conservative, and emanated from my brother David, who was a poor man. The other was held by the richest man of my acquaintance, and was distinctly Liberal. My brother argued that the Upper House should have the power to tax its own constituents, and was utterly opposed to any extension of the franchise. My rich friend objected to the limited franchise, and desired to have the State proclaimed one electorate with proportional representation as a safeguard against unwise legislation and as a means to assist reforms. The great blot, he considered, on Australian Constitutions was the representation by districts, especially for the House that controlled the public purse. If districts were to be tolerated at all, they should be represented by men who had a longer tenure of office than our Assembly's three years, and who did not have so often to ask for votes, which frequently depended on a railway or a jetty or a Rabbit Bill. So long as a Government depends for its existence on the support of local representatives it is tempted to spend public money to gratify them. Both men were Freetraders, and both believed strongly in the justice of land values taxation.

My friend the late Professor Pearson had entered into active political life in Melbourne, and was a regular writer for The Age. Perhaps no other man underwent more obloquy from his old friends for taking the side of Graham Berry, especially as he was a Freetrader, and the popular party was Protectionist. He justified his action by saying that a mistake in the fiscal policy of a country should not prevent a real Democrat from siding with the party which opposed monopoly, especially in land. He saw in "LATIFUNDIA"—huge estates—the ruin of the Roman Empire, and its prevalence in the United Kingdom was the greatest danger ahead of it. In these young countries the tendency to build up large holdings was naturally fostered by what was the earliest of our industries. Sheepfarming is not greatly pursued in the United States or Canada, because of the rigorous winter—but Australia is the favourite home of the merino sheep. Originally there was no need to buy land, or even to pay rent to the Government for it; the land had no value till settlement gave it. The squatter leased it on easy terms, and bought it only when it had sufficient value to be desired by agriculturists or by selectors who posed as agriculturists. When he bought it he generally complained of the price these selectors compelled him to pay, but it was then secure; and, with the growth of population and the railroads and other improvements, these enforced purchasers, even in 1877, had built up vast estates in single hands in every State in Australia. In The Melbourne Review for April, 1877, Professor Pearson sketched a plan of land taxation, which was afterwards carried out, in which the area of land held was the test for graduated taxation. Henry George had not then declared his gospel; and, although I felt that there was something very faulty in the scheme, I did not declare in my article on the subject that an acre in Collins street might be of more value than 50,000 acres of pastoral land 500 miles from the seaboard, and was therefore more fitly liable to taxation for the advantage of the whole community, who had given to that acre this exceptional value. I did not declare it because I did not believe it. But I thought that the end aimed at—the breaking up of large estates—could be better and more safely effected, though not so quickly, by a change in the incidence of succession duties.

Some time after I saw a single copy of Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" on Robertson's shelves, and bought it, and it was I who after reading this book opened in the three most important Australian colonies the question of the taxation of land values. An article I wrote went into The Register, and Mr. Liston, of Kapunda, read it, and spoke of it at a farmers' meeting. I had then a commission from The Sydney Morning Herald to write on any important subject, and I wrote on this. It appeared, like a previous article on Howell's "Conflicts of Capital and Labour," as an unsigned article. A new review, The Victorian, had been started by Mortimer Franlyn, which paid contributors; and, now that I was a professional journalist, I thought myself entitled to ask remuneration. I sent to the new periodical, published in Melbourne, a fuller treatment of the book than had been given to the two newspapers, under the title of "A Californian Political Economist." This fell into the hands of Henry George himself, in a reading room in San Francisco, and he wrote an acknowledgment of it to me. In South Australia the first tax on unimproved land values was imposed. It was small—only a halfpenny in the pound, but without any exemption; and its imposition was encouraged by the fact that we had had bad seasons and a falling revenue. The income tax in England was originally a war tax, and they say that if there is not a war the United States will never be able to impose an income tax. The separate States have not the power to impose such a tax. Henry George said to me in his home in New York:—"I wonder at you, with your zeal and enthusiasm, and your power of speaking, devoting yourself to such a small matter as proportional representation, when you see the great land question before you." I replied that to me it was not a small matter. I cannot, however, write my autobiography without giving prominence to the fact that I was the pioneer in Australia in this as in the other matter of proportional representation.



CHAPTER XVI.

SORROW AND CHANGE.

In the long and cheerful life of my dear mother there at last came a change. At 94 she fell and broke her wrist. The local doctor (a stranger), who was called in, not knowing her wonderful constitution, was averse from setting the wrist, and said that she would never be able to use the hand. But I insisted, and in six, weeks she was able to resume her knitting, and never felt any ill effects. At 95 she had a fall, apparently without cause, and was never able to stand again. She had to stay in bed for the last 13 months of her life, with a gradual decay of the faculties which had previously been so keen. My mother wanted me with her always. Her talk was all of times far back in her life—not of Melrose, where she had lived for 25 years, but of Scoryhall (pronounced Scole), where she had lived as a girl. I had been shown through the house by my aunt Handyside in 1865, and I could follow her mind wanderings and answer her questions. As she suffered so little pain it was difficult for my mother to realize the seriousness of her illness; and, tiring of her bedroom, she begged to be taken to the study, where, with her reading and knitting, she had spent so many happy hours while I did my writing. Delighted though she was at the change, a return to her bed—as to all invalids—was a comfort, and she never left it again. Miss Goodham—an English nurse and a charming woman, who has since remained a friend and correspondent of the family—was sent to help us for a few days at the last. Another sorrow came to us at this time in the loss of my ward's husband, and Rose Hood—nee Duval—returned to live near me with her three small children. Her commercial training enabled her to take a position as clerk in the State Children's Department, which she retained until her death. The little ones were very sweet and good, but the supervision of them during the day added a somewhat heavy responsibility to our already overburdened household. In these days, when one hears so much of the worthlessness of servants, it is a joy to remember how our faithful maid—we kept only one for that large house—at her own request, did all the laundry work for the family of five, and all through the three years of Eleanor's illness waited on her with untiring devotion.

An amusing episode which would have delighted the heart of my dear friend Judge Lindsay occurred about this time. The fruit from our orange trees which grew along the wall bordering an adjoining paddock was an irresistible temptation to wandering juveniles, and many and grievous were the depredations. Patience, long drawn out, at last gave way, and when the milkman caught two delinquents one Saturday afternoon with bulging blouses of forbidden fruit it became necessary to make an example of some one. The trouble was to devise a fitting punishment. A Police Court, I had always maintained, was no place for children; corporal punishment was out of the question; and the culprits stood tremblingly awaiting their fate till a young doctor present suggested a dose of Gregory's powder. His lawyer friend acquiesced, and Gregory's powder it was. A moment's hesitation and the nauseous draught was swallowed to the accompaniment of openly expressed sympathy, one dear old lady remarking, "Poor children and not so much as a taste of sugar." Probably, however, the unkindest cut of all was the carrying away by the milkman of the stolen fruit! The cure was swift and effective; and ever after the youth of the district, like the Pharisee of old, passed by on the other side.

My dear mother died about 8 o'clock on the evening of December 8, 1887, quietly and painlessly. With her death, which was an exceedingly great loss to me, practically ended my quiet life of literary work. Henceforth I was free to devote my efforts to the fuller public work for which I had so often longed, but which my mother's devotion to and dependence on me rendered impossible. But I missed her untiring sympathy, for with all her love for the old days and the old friends there was no movement for the advancement of her adopted land that did not claim her devoted attention. But though I was now free to take up public work, the long strain of my mother's illness and death had affected my usually robust health, and I took things quietly. I had been asked by the University Shakspeare Society to give a lecture on Donnelly's book, "The Great Cryptogram;" or "Who Wrote Shakspeare's Plays?" and it was prepared during this period, and has frequently been delivered since. October of the year following my mothers death found me again in Melbourne, where I rejoiced in the renewal of a friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Walker, the former of whom had been connected with the construction of the overland railway. They were delightful literary people, and I had met them at the hospitable house of the Barr-Smiths, and been introduced as "a literary lady." "Then perhaps," said Mr. Walker, "you can give us the information we have long sought in vain—who wrote 'Clara Morrison?'" Their surprise at my "I did" was equalled by the pleasure I felt at their kind appreciation of my book, and that meeting was the foundation of a lifelong friendship. Before my visit closed I was summoned to Gippsland through the death by accident of my dear sister Jessie—the widow of Andrew Murray, once editor of The Argus—and the year 1888 ended as sadly for me as the previous one had done. The following year saw the marriage of my nephew, Charles Wren of the E.S. and A. Bank, to Miss Hall, of Melbourne. On his deciding to live on in the old home, I, with Ellen Gregory, whom I had brought out in 1867 to reside with relations, but who has remained to be the prop and mainstay of my old age—and Mrs. Hood and her three children, moved to a smaller and more suitable house I had in another part of East Adelaide. A placid flowing of the river of life for a year or two led on to my being elected, in 1892, President of the Girls' Literary Society. This position I filled with joy to myself and, I hope, with advantage to others, until some years later the society ceased to exist.

Crowded and interesting as my life had been hitherto, the best was yet to be. My realization of Browning's beautiful line from "Rabbi Ben Ezra"—"The last of life, for which the first was made," came when I saw opening before me possibilities for public service undreamed of in my earlier years. For the advancement of effective voting I had so far confined my efforts to the newspapers. My brother John had suggested the change of name from proportional representation to effective voting as one more likely to catch the popular ear, and I had proposed a modification of Hare's original plan of having one huge electorate, and suggested instead the adoption of six-member districts. The State as one electorate returning 42 members for the Assembly may be magnificent, and may also be the pure essence of democracy, but it is neither commonsense nor practicable. "Why not take effective voting to the people?" was suggested to me. No sooner said than done. I had ballot papers prepared and leaflets printed, and I began the public campaign which has gone on ever since. During a visit to Melbourne as a member of a charities conference it was first discovered that I had some of the gifts of a public speaker. My friend, the Rev. Charles Strong, had invited me to lecture before his working men's club at Collingwood, and I chose as my subject "Effective Voting."

When on my return Mr. Barr Smith, who had long grasped the principle of justice underlying effective voting, and was eager for its adoption, offered to finance a lecturing tour through the State, I jumped at the offer. There was the opportunity for which I had been waiting for years. I got up at unearthly hours to catch trains, and sometimes succeeded only through the timely lifts of kindly drivers. Once I went in a carrier's van, because I had missed the early morning cars. I travelled thousands of miles in all weathers to carry to the people the gospel of electoral reform. Disappointments were frequent, and sometimes disheartening; but the silver lining of every cloud turned up somewhere, and I look back on that first lecturing tour as a time of the sowing of good seed, the harvest of which is now beginning to ripen. I had no advance agents to announce my arrival, and at one town in the north I found nobody at the station to meet me. I spent the most miserable two and a half hours of my life waiting Micawber-like for something to turn up; and it turned up in the person of the village blacksmith. I spoke to him, and explained my mission to the town. He had heard nothing of any meeting. Incidentally I discovered that my correspondent was in Adelaide, and had evidently forgotten all about my coming. "Well," I said to the blacksmith, "if you can get together a dozen intelligent men I will explain effective voting to them." He looked at me with a dumbfounded air, and then burst out, "Good G—, madam, there are not three intelligent men in the town." But the old order has changed, and in 1909 Mrs. Young addressed an enthusiastic audience of 150 in the same town and on the same subject. The town, moreover, is in a Parliamentary district, in which every candidate at the recent general election—and there were seven of them—supported effective voting. Far down in the south I went to a little village containing seven churches, which accounted (said the local doctor) for the extreme backwardness of its inhabitants. "They have so many church affairs to attend to that there is no time to think of anything else." At the close of this lecturing tour The Register undertook the public count through its columns, which did so much to bring the reform before the people of South Australia. Public interest was well aroused on the matter before my long projected trip to America took shape. "Come and teach us how to vote," my American friends had been writing to me for years; but I felt that it was a big order for a little woman of 68 to undertake the conversion to electoral reform of 60 millions of the most conceited people in the world. Still I went. I left Adelaide bound for America on April 4, 1893, as a Government Commissioner and delegate to the Great World's Fair Congresses in Chicago.

In Melbourne and Sydney on my way to the boat for San Francisco I found work to do. Melbourne was in the throes of the great financial panic, when bank after bank closed its doors; but the people went to church as usual. I preached in the Unitarian Church on the Sunday, and lectured in Dr. Strong's Australian Church on Monday. In Sydney Miss Rose Scott had arranged a drawing-room meeting for a lecture on effective voting. A strong convert I made on that occasion was Mr. (afterwards Sr.) Walker. A few delightful hours I spent at his charming house on the harbour with his family, and was taken by them to see many beauty spots. Those last delightful days in Sydney left me with pleasant Australian memories to carry over the Pacific. When the boat sailed on April 17, the rain came down in torrents. Some interesting missionaries were on board. One of them, the venerable Dr. Brown, who had been for 30 years labouring in the Pacific, introduced me to Sir John Thurston. Mr. Newell was returning to Samoa after a two years' holiday in England. He talked much, and well about his work. He had 104 students to whom he was returning. He explained that they became missionaries to other more benighted and less civilized islands, where their knowledge of the traditions and customs of South Sea Islanders made them invaluable as propagandists. The writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, had prepared me to find in the Samoans a handsome and stalwart race, with many amiable traits, and I was not disappointed. The beauty of the scenery appealed to me strongly, and I doubt whether "the light that never was on sea or land" could have rivalled the magic charm of the one sunrise we saw at Samoa. During the voyage I managed to get in one lecture, and many talks on effective voting. Had I been superstitious my arrival in San Francisco on Friday, May 12, might have boded ill for the success of my mission, but I was no sooner ashore than my friend Alfred Cridge took me in charge, and the first few days were a whirl of meetings, addresses and interviews.



CHAPTER XVII.

IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

Alfred Cridge, who reminded me so much of my brother David that I felt at home with him immediately, had prepared the way for my lectures on effective voting in San Francisco. He was an even greater enthusiast than I. "America needs the reform more than Australia," he used to say. But if America needs effective voting to check corruption, Australia needs it just as much to prevent the degradation of political life in the Commonwealth and States to the level of American politics. My lectures in San Francisco, as elsewhere in America, were well attended, and even better received. Party politics had crushed out the best elements of political life, and to be independent of either party gave a candidate, as an agent told Judge Lindsay when he was contesting the governorship of Colorado, "as much chance as a snowball would have in hell." So that reformers everywhere were eager to hear of a system of voting that would free the electors from the tyranny of parties, and at the same time render a candidate independent of the votes of heckling minorities, and dependent only on the votes of the men who believed in him and his politics. I met men and women interested in public affairs—some of them well known, others most worthy to be known, and all willing to lend the weight of their character and intelligence to the betterment of human conditions at home and abroad. Among these were Judge Maguire, a leader of the Bar in San Francisco and a member of the State Legislature, who had fought trusts, "grafters," and "boodlers" through the whole of his public career, and Mr. James Barry, proprietor of The Star.

"You come from Australia, the home of the secret ballot?" was the greeting I often received, and that really was my passport to the hearts of reformers all over America. From all sides I heard that it was to the energy and zeal of the Singletaxers in the various States—a well-organized and compact body—that the adoption of the secret ballot was due. To that celebrated journalist, poetess, and economic writer, Charlotte Perkins Stetson, who was a cultured Bostonian, living in San Francisco, I owed one of the best women's meetings I ever addressed. The subject was "State children and the compulsory clauses in our Education Act," and everywhere in the States people were interested in the splendid work of our State Children's Department and educational methods. Intelligence and not wealth I found to be the passport to social life among the Americans I met. At a social evening ladies as well as their escorts were expected to remove bonnets and mantles in the hall, instead of being invited into a private room as in Australia—a custom I thought curious until usage made it familiar. The homeliness and unostentatiousness of the middle class American were captivating. My interests have always been in people and in the things that make for human happiness or misery rather than in the beauties of Nature, art, or architecture. I want to know how the people live, what wages are, what the amount of comfort they can buy; how the people are fed, taught, and amused; how the burden of taxation falls; how justice is executed; how much or how little liberty the people enjoy. And these things I learned to a great extent from my social intercourse with those cultured reformers of America. Among these people I had not the depressing feeling of immensity and hugeness which marred my enjoyment when I arrived at New York. My literary lectures on the Brownings and George Eliot were much appreciated, especially in the East, where I found paying audiences in the fall or autumn of the year. These lectures have been delivered many times in Australia; and, as the result of the Browning lecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received from the pen of Mr. J. B. Mather a clever epigram. The room was large and sparsely filled, and to the modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated. So he amused himself and me by writing:

I have no doubt that words of sense Are falling from the lips of Spence. Alas! that Echo should be drowning Both words of Spence and sense of Browning.

I found the Brownings far better appreciated in America than in England, especially by American women. In spite of the fact that The San Francisco Chronicle had interviewed me favourably on my arrival, and that I knew personally some of the leading people on The Examiner, neither paper would report my lectures on effective voting. The Star, however, quite made up for the deficiencies of the other papers, and did all it could to help me and the cause. While in San Francisco I wrote an essay on "Electoral Reform" for a Toronto competition, in which the first prize was $500. Mr. Cridge was also a competitor; but, although many essays were sent in, for some reason the prize was never awarded, and we had our trouble for nothing. On my way to Chicago I stayed at a mining town to lecture on effective voting. I found the hostess of the tiny hotel a brilliant pianist and a perfect linguist, and she quoted poetry—her own and other people's—by the yard. A lady I journeyed with told me that she had been travelling for seven years with her husband and "Chambers's Encyclopedia." I thought they used the encyclopaedia as a guide book until, in a sort of postscript to our conversation, I discovered the husband to be a book agent, better known in America as a "book fiend."

Nobody had ever seen anything like the World's Fair. My friend Dr. Bayard Holmes of Chigago, whose acquaintance I made through missing a suburban train, expressed a common feeling when he said he could weep at the thought that it was all to be destroyed—that the creation evolved from the best brains of America should be dissolved. Much of our human toil is lost and wasted, and much of our work is more ephemeral than we think; but this was a conscious creation of hundreds of beautiful buildings for a six months' existence. Nowhere else except in America could the thing have been done, and nowhere else in America but in Chicago. At the Congress of Charity and correction I found every one interested in Australia's work for destitute children. It was difficult for Miss Windeyer, of Sydney, and myself—the only Australians present—to put ourselves in the place of many who believed in institutions where children of low physique, low morals, and low intelligence are massed together, fed, washed, drilled, taught by rule, never individualized, and never mothered. I spoke from pulpits in Chicago and Indianapolis on the subject, and was urged to plead with the Governor of the latter State to use his influence to have at least tiny mites of six years of age removed from the reformatory, which was under the very walls of the gaol. But he was obdurate to my pleadings and arguments, as he had been to those of the State workers. He maintained that these tiny waifs of six were incorrigible, and were better in institutions than in homes. The most interesting woman I met at the conference was the Rev. Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, pastor of Bell Street Chapel, Providence. I visited her at home, in that retreat of Baptists, Quakers, and others from the hard persecution of the New England Orthodoxy, the founders of which had left England in search of freedom to worship God. Her husband was the Unitarian minister of another congregation in the same town. At the meetings arranged by Mrs. Spencer, Professor Andrews, one of the Behring Sea arbitrators, and Professor Wilson were present; and they invited me to speak on effective voting at the Brunn University.

In Philadelphia I addressed seven meetings on the same subject. At six of them an editor of a little reform paper was present. For two years he had lived on brown bread and dried apples, in order that he could save enough to buy a newspaper plant for the advocacy of reforms. In his little paper he replied to the critics, who assured me that it was no use worrying, as everything would come right in time. "Time only brings wonders," he wrote, "when good and great men and women rise up to move the world along. Time itself brings only decay and death. The truth is 'Nothing will come right unless those who feel they have the truth speak, and Work, and strain as if on them alone rested the destinies of the world.'" I went to see a celebrated man, George W. Childs, who had made a fortune out of The Philadelphia Ledger, and who was one of the best employers in the States. He knew everybody, not only in America but in Europe; and his room was a museum of gifts from great folks all over the world. But, best of all, he, with his devoted friend Anthony Drexel, had founded the Drexel Institute, which was their magnificent educational legacy to the historic town. I saw the Liberty Bell in Chicago—the bell that rang out the Declaration of Independence, and cracked soon after—which is cherished by all good Americans. It had had a triumphant progress to and from the World's Fair, and I was present when once again it was safely landed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. I think the Americans liked me, because I thought their traditions reputably old, and did not, like European visitors, call everything crude and new. The great war in America strengthened the Federal bond, while it loosened the attachment to the special Satte in which the United States citizen lives. Railroads and telegraphs have done much to make Americans homogeneous, and the school system grapples bravely with the greater task of Americanizing the children of foreigners, who arrive in such vast numbers. Canada allowed the inhabitants of lower Canada to keep their language, their laws, and their denominational schools; and the consequence is that these Canadian-British subjects are more French than the French, more conservative than the Tories, and more Catholic than Irish or Italians. Education is absolutely free in America up to the age of 18; but I never heard an American complain of being taxed to educate other people's children. In Auburn I met Harriet Tribman, called the "Moses of her people"—an old black woman who could neither read nor write, but who had escaped from slavery when young, and had made 19 journeys south, and been instrumental in the escape of 300 slaves. To listen to her was to be transferred to the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Her language was just that of Tom and old Jeff. A pious Christian, she was full of good works still. Her shanty was a refuge for the sick, blind, and maimed of her own people. I went all over Harvard University under the guidance of Professor Ashley, to whom our Chief Justice had given me a letter of introduction. He got up a drawing-room meeting for me, at which I met Dr. Gordon Ames, pastor of the Unitarian Church of the Disciples. He invited me to preach his thanksgiving service for him on the following Thursday, which I was delighted to do. Mrs. Ames was the factory inspector of women and children in Massachusetts, and was probably the wisest woman I met in my travels. She spoke to me of the evils of stimulating the religious sentiment too young, and said that the hushed awe with which most people spoke of God and His constant presence filled a child's mind with fear.

She related an experience with her own child, who on going to bed had asked if God was in the room. The child was told that God was always besides us. After being left in darkness the child was heard sobbing, and a return to the nursery elicited the confession, "Oh, mamma, I can't bear to be left with no one but God." Better the simple anthropomorphism which makes God like the good father, the generous uncle, the indulgent grandfather, or the strong elder brother.

Such ideas as these of God were held by the heroines of the following stories:—A little girl, a niece of the beloved Bishop Brooks, had done wrong, and was told to confess her sin to God before she slept, and to beg His forgiveness. When asked next day whether she had obeyed the command, she said—"Oh, yes! I told God all about it, and God said, 'Don't mention it, Miss Brooks.'" A similar injunction was laid upon a child brought up by a very severe and rather unjust aunt. Her reply when asked if she had confessed her sin was "I told God what I had done, and what you thought about it, and I just left it to Him." The response of a third American girl (who was somewhat of a "pickle" and had been reared among a number of boys) to the enquiry whether she had asked forgiveness for a wrong done was—"Oh, yes; I told God exactly what I had done, and He said, 'Great Scot, Elsie Murray, I know 500 little girls worse than you.'" To me this was a much healthier state of mind than setting children weeping for their sins, as I have done myself.

On my second visit to Boston I spent three weeks with the family of William, Lloyd Garrison, son of the famous Abolitionist. The Chief Justice had given me a letter of introduction to him, and I found him a true-hearted humanitarian, as devoted to the gospel of single tax as his father had been to that of anti-slavery. They lived in a beautiful house in Brookline, on a terrace built by an enterprising man who had made his money in New South Wales. Forty-two houses were perfectly and equally warmed by one great furnace, and all the public rooms of the ground floor, dining, and drawing rooms, library, and hall were connected by folding doors, nearly always open, which gave a feeling of space I never experienced elsewhere. Electric lighting and bells all over the house, hot and cold baths, lifts, the most complete laundry arrangements, and cupboards everywhere ensured the maximum of comfort with the minimum of labour. But in this house I began to be a little ashamed of being so narrow in my views on the coloured question. Mr. Garrison, animated with the spirit of the true brotherhood of man, was an advocate of the heathen Chinee, and was continually speaking of the goodness of the negro and coloured and yellow races, and of the injustice and rapacity of the white Caucasians. I saw the files of his father's paper, The Liberator, from its beginning in 1831 till its close, when the victory was won in 1865. Of the time spent in the Lloyd-Garrison household "nothing now is left but a majestic memory," which has been kept green by the periodical letters received from this noble man up till the time of his death last year. He showed me the monument erected to the memory of his father in Boston in the town where years before the great abolitionist had been stoned by the mob. Only recently it rejoiced my heart to know that a memorial to Lloyd Garrison the younger had been unveiled in Boston, his native city; at the same time that a similar honour was paid to his venerated leader, "the prophet of San Francisco."

I account it one of the greatest privileges of my visit to America that Mrs. Garrison introduced me to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and by appointment I had an hour and a half's chat with him in the last year of his long life. He was the only survivor of a famous band of New England writers, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorn, Bryant, Lowell, Whittier, and Whitman were dead. His memory was failing, and he forgot some of his own characters; but Elsie Venner he remembered perfectly and he woke to full animation when I objected to the fatalism of heredity as being about as paralysing to effort as the fatalism of Calvinism. As a medical man (and we are apt to forget the physician in the author) he took strong views of heredity. As a worker among our destitute children, I considered environment the greater factor of the two, and spoke of children of the most worth less parents who had turned out well when placed early in respectable and kindly homes. Before I left, the author presented me with an autograph copy of one of his books—a much-prized gift. He was reading Cotton Mather's "Memorabilia," not for theology, but for gossip. It was the only chronicle of the small beer of current events in the days of the witch persecutions, and the expulsion of the Quakers, Baptists, and other schismatics. I have often felt proud that of all the famous men I have mentioned in this connection there was only one not a Unitarian, and that was Whittier, the Quaker poet of abolition; and his theology was of the mildest.