mething to
put up with in this imperfect life.

TEN.

PROVINCIAL POLITICS AND SEMI-SUBURBAN DENTISTS.

May dawned over the world, and throughout New South Wales awoke a
stir, reaching even to the sleepy heart of Noonoon. This was owing to
the fact that the State Parliament was near the end of its term, and
political candidates for the ensuing election were already in the
field.

Though not many decades settled, the country had progressed to
nationhood, England allowing the precocious youngster this freedom of
self-government, and sending her Crown Prince to open her first
Commonwealth Parliament. Then the fledgling nation, bravely in the van
of progress, had invested its women with the tangible hall-mark of
full being or citizenship, by giving them a right to a voice in the
laws by which they were governed; and now, watched by the older
countries whose women were still in bondage, the women of this
Australian State were about to take part in a political election. Not
for the first time either,--let them curtsey to the liberality of
their countrymen!

The Federal elections, for which women were entitled to stand as
senatorial candidates, had come previously, and though old prejudice
had been too strong to the extent of many votes to grasp that a woman
might really be a senatrix, and that a vote cast for her would not be
wasted, still one woman candidate had polled 51,497 votes where the
winning candidate had gone in on 85,387, and this had been no
"shrieking sister" such as the clever woman is depicted by those who
fear progress, but a beautiful, refined, educated, and particularly
womanly young lady in the heyday of youth. The cowardly old sneer that
disappointment had driven her to this had no footing here, as she had
every qualification, except empty-headedness, to have ensured success
as a belle in the social world, had she been disposed to pad her own
life by means of a wealthy marriage instead of endeavouring to benefit
her generation in becoming a legislator. She was a fitting daughter of
the land of the Southern Sun, whose sons were among the first to admit
their sisters to equal citizenship with themselves, and she
brilliantly proved her fitness for her right by her wonderful ability
on the hustings, which had been free from any vocal shortcoming and
unacquainted with hesitation in replying to the knottiest question
regarding the most intricate bill.

The Federal election, however, in a sense ha