Part 5 (1/2)

CHAPTER XVI

SORROW AND CHANGE

In the long and cheerful life of e At 94 she fell and broke her wrist The local doctor (a stranger), as called in, not knowing her wonderful constitution, was averse fro 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 resu, 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 radual 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 s and answer her questions As she suffered so little pain it was difficult for myof her bedrooed to be taken to the study, where, with her reading and knitting, she had spent so h she was at the change, a return to her bed--as to all invalids--was a colish nurse and a char 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 nearenabled 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 the 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 ree house--at her own request, did all the laundry work for the fah the three years of Eleanor's illness waited on her with untiring devotion

An ahted the heart of e Lindsay occurred about this ti the wall bordering an adjoining paddock was an irresistible terievous were the depredations Patience, long drawn out, at last gave way, and when the ht two delinquents one Saturday afternoon with bulging blouses of forbidden fruit it became necessary to make an exa punishment A Police Court, I had always maintained, was no place for children; corporal punishly 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 ht ed to the accompani, ”Poor children and not so ar” Probably, however, the unkindest cut of all was the carrying away by the milkman of the stolen fruit! The cure ift and effective; and ever after the youth of the district, like the Pharisee of old, passed by on the other side

My dearof 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 onsympathy, 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 claih I was now free to take up public work, the long strain of my mother's illness and death had affected s 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 ain in Melbourne, where I rejoiced in the renewal of a friendshi+p 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 inforht in vain--rote 'Clara Morrison?'” Their surprise at my ”I did” was equalled by the pleasure I felt at their kind appreciation offriendshi+p Before h the death by accident of my dear sister Jessie--theof Andrew Murray, once editor of The Argus--and the year 1888 ended as sadly foryear saw the e of my nephew, Charles Wren of the ES and A Bank, to Miss Hall, of Melbourne On his deciding to live on in the old hoht out in 1867 to reside with relations, but who has ree--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 toelected, in 1892, President of the Girls'

Literary Society This position I filled with joy to e 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 wasbefore me possibilities for public service undreamed of inI had so far confined ested the change of na as one more likely to catch the popular ear, and I had proposed a e electorate, and suggested instead the adoption of six- 42 nificent, and may also be the pure essence of democracy, but it is neither co 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 ca a visit to Melbourne as a member of a charities conference it was first discovered that I had soifts of a public speaker My friend, the Rev Charles Strong, had invited wood, and I chose as ”

When on rasped 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 soh the timely lifts of kindly drivers Once I went in a carrier's van, because I hadcars I travelled thousands of ospel of electoral refor; but the silver lining of every cloud turned up so tour as a tiinning 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 theMicawber-like for so to turn up; and it turned up in the person of the village blacksmith I spoke to hi of anyIncidentally I discovered that otten all about et together a dozen intelligentto them” He looked at me with a dumbfounded air, and then burst out, ”Good G--, ent ed, 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 Parliaeneral election--and there were seven of the 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 ti else”

At the close of this lecturing tour The Register undertook the public count through its colu the reform before the people of South Australia Public interest ell aroused on theprojected trip to America took shape ”Come and teach us how to vote,”toorder 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 Governresses 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-roo convert I made on that occasion was Mr (afterwards Sr) Walker A few delightful hours I spent at his char house on the harbour with his family, and was taken by thehtful days in Sydney left me with pleasant Australian memories to carry over the Pacific When the boat sailed on April 17, the rain ca missionaries were on board One of them, the venerable Dr Broho had been for 30 years labouring in the Pacific, introducedto Saland He talked much, and well about his work He had 104 students to who He explained that they becahted and less civilized islands, where their knowledge of the traditions and custoandists 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 ht that never was on sea or land” could have rivalled thethe voyage I et in one lecture, andHad I been superstitious ht have boded ill for the success of my mission, but I was no sooner ashore than e, and the first few days were a whirl of s, 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 forin San Francisco He was an even greater enthusiast than I ”America needs the reform more than Australia,” he used to say

But if A to check corruption, Australia needs it just as radation of political life in the Commonwealth and States to the level of American politics My lectures in San Francisco, as elsewhere in America, ell 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 governorshi+p of Colorado, ”as much chance as a sobll would have in hell” So that refor that would free the electors from the tyranny of parties, and at the same ti 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 the to lend the weight of their character and intelligence to the better these were Judge Maguire, a leader of the Bar in San Francisco and a rafters,” and ”boodlers”

through the whole of his public career, and Mr James Barry, proprietor of The Star

”You coreeting I often received, and that really was my passport to the hearts of reformers all over Ay 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, as a cultured Bostonian, living in San Francisco, I owed one of the best wos 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 Departence and not wealth I found to be the passport to social life a ladies as well as their escorts were expected to re invited into a private rooe made it familiar The homeliness and unostentatiousness of theMy 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 kno the people live, ages are, what the aht, and amused; how the burden of taxation falls; how justice is executed; how s I learned to a great extent from my social intercourse with those cultured refor feeling of ieness which marred my enjoyment when I arrived at New York My literary lectures on the Brownings and George Eliot wereaudiences in the fall or autumn of the year These lectures have been deliveredlecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received frorae and sparsely filled, and to the modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated So he a:

I have no doubt that words of sense Are falling fro Both words of Spence and sense of Browning

I found the Brownings far better appreciated in Aland, especially by American women In spite of the fact that The San Francisco Chronicle had interviewed me favourably onpeople on The Examiner, neither paper would reportThe 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 coe was also a coh many essays were sent in, for some reason the prize was never awarded, and we had our trouble for nothing Ontown 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 toldfor seven years with her husband and ”Chaht 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 Hol a suburban train, expressed a coht 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 A have been done, and nowhere else in Aress 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 ether, fed, washed, drilled, taught by rule, never individualized, and never o 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 e removed froaol But he was obdurate to uments, as he had been to those of the State workers He ible, and were better in institutions than in ho 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 froland Orthodoxy, the founders of which had left England in search of freedom to worshi+p God Her husband was the Unitarian ation in the saed by Mrs

Spencer, Professor Andrews, one of the Behring Sea arbitrators, and Professor Wilson were present; and they invitedat the Brunn University

In Philadelphia I addressed seven s 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 ht in tireatTi will coht 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 e W

Childs, who had er, and as one of the best employers in the States He knew everybody, not only in Aifts froreat folks all over the world But, best of all, he, with his devoted friend Anthony Drexel, had founded the Drexel Institute, which was their acy 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 Aress to and froain it was safely landed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia I think the Aht their traditions reputably old, and did not, like European visitors, call everything crude and new The great war in Athened the Federal bond, while it loosened the attachment to the special Satte in which the United States citizen lives