An Autobiography

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 ob

. 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 Sta

-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 agr

sance, 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. Fi

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