how little liberty the people enjoy. And these
things I learned to a great extent from my social intercourse with
those cultured reformers of America. Among these people I had not the
depressing feeling of immensity and hugeness which marred my enjoyment
when I arrived at New York. My literary lectures on the Brownings and
George Eliot were much appreciated, especially in the East, where I
found paying audiences in the fall or autumn of the year. These
lectures have been delivered many times in Australia; and, as the
result of the Browning lecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in
Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received from the pen of Mr. J. B. Mather
a clever epigram. The room was large and sparsely filled, and to the
modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated. So he
amused himself and me by writing:

I have no doubt that words of sense
Are falling from the lips of Spence.
Alas! that Echo should be drowning
Both words of Spence and sense of Browning.

I found the Brownings far better appreciated in America than in
England, especially by American women. In spite of the fact that The
San Francisco Chronicle had interviewed me favourably on my arrival,
and that I knew personally some of the leading people on The Examiner,
neither paper would report my lectures on effective voting. The 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 competition, in
which the first prize was $500. Mr. Cridge was also a competitor; but,
although many essays were sent in, for some reason the prize was never
awarded, and we had our trouble for nothing. On my way to Chicago I
stayed at a mining town 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 told me that she had been travelling for seven years
with her husband and "Chambers's Encyclopedia." I thought 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 Holmes of Chigago, whose acquaintance I made through missing a
suburban train, expressed a common