of one of
those girls as she stood by the hearth drawing off her gloves
lives in my memory. Too deep for tears was its sorrow, shame, and
hopelessness....

"I had given up drink and was living in the bush. To anyone with
normal nerves it would have been a happy time of quiet, rustic
peace, beauty, and relief from city life. With me it was restless
vanity amounting to madness. In every relation, action, or
possible event in which I figured or might figure in the future,
I always instantaneously called up an imaginary audience. And
then this imaginary audience admired everything I did or might
do, and put the most heroic, gallant, and romantic construction
on my acts, appearance, lineage, and breeding. Suppose I saw a
pretty girl on a bush road. Instead of thinking 'There is a
pretty girl; I should like to know her or kiss her,' as I suppose
a healthy, normal young man would think, I thought after this
fashion: 'There is a pretty girl; now, as I pass her she will
think I am a handsome and aristocratic-looking stranger, and, as
I carry a sketch-book, an artist--"A landscape painter! How
romantic!" she will say, and then she will fall in love with me,'
etc. This preoccupation with what other people might think or
would think so engrossed all my time that I had no means of
enjoying the presence, thought, or favor of the divine creatures
I met, and I must have appeared 'cracked' to them with my
reticence, pride, and silly airs.

"I met girls as foolish as myself sometimes. Once at a _table
d'hote_ I met a young girl who went for a walk with me and let me
know her carnally although she was little more than a schoolgirl.
She was going down to town soon, she said, and would meet me at a
certain hotel (belonging to relations of hers) in Adelaide on a
certain date, some time ahead; if I took a room there she would
come into it during the night. In the meanwhile I had given way
to drink again and abused myself at intervals. I came down to
town, drunk, in the coach, and kept my appointment with the young
girl at the hotel, expecting a night of pleasure; but she merely
stared at me coldly as if she had never seen me before. I abused
myself twice in my solitary room....

"I met a middle-aged schoolteacher (who had once been an officer
in the army) down for his holidays. As he spok