y distinguished from the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year
by plum-pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of home-made beer, has
been once more; New Year, ushered in with sweet-scented midsummer wattle
and bloom of gum- and box-tree has gone; February has followed, March is
doing likewise, and my life is still the same.

What the future holds I know not, and am tonight so Weary that I do not
care.

Time rules us all. And life, indeed, is not
The thing we planned it out, ere hope was dead;
And then, we women cannot choose our lot.

Time is thorough in his work, and as that arch-cheat, Hope, gradually
becomes a phantom of the past, the neck will grow inured to its yoke.

Tonight is one of the times when the littleness--the abject
littleness--of all things in life comes home to me.

After all, what is there in vain ambition? King or slave, we all must
die, and when death knocks at our door, will it matter whether our life
has been great or small, fast or slow, so long as it has been true--true
with the truth that will bring rest to the soul?

But the toughest lives are brittle,
And the bravest and the best
Lightly fall--it matters little;
Now I only long for rest.

To weary hearts throbbing slowly in hopeless breasts the sweetest thing
is rest.

And my heart is weary. Oh, how it aches tonight--not with the ache of a
young heart passionately crying out for battle, but with the slow dead
ache of an old heart returning vanquished and defeated!

Enough of pessimistic snarling and grumbling! Enough! Enough! Now for a
lilt of another theme:

I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a
child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I am a peasant, a part of the
bone and muscle of my nation, and earn my bread by the sweat of my brow,
as man was meant to do. I rejoice I was not born a parasite, one of the
blood-suckers who loll on velvet and satin, crushed from the proceeds of
human sweat and blood and souls.

Ah, my sunburnt brothers!--sons of toil and of Australia! I love and
respect you well, for you are brave and good and true. I have seen not
only those of you with youth and hope strong in your veins, but those
with pathetic streaks of grey in your hair, large families to support,
and with half a century sitting upon your work-laden shoulders. I have
seen you struggle uncomplainingly against flood, fire, disease in stock,
pests, drought, trade depression, and sickness, and yet hav