rst visit to Adelaide that I realized how great an orator he was. At
the close of the no-confidence debate the triumphant remark of an
admirer that "Adelaide couldn't produce a speaker like that" showed me
that a prophet sometimes hath honour, even in his own country.

Mr. Wise was a brilliant speaker, and a most cultured man, and a
delightful talker. Of Mrs. Parkes, then President of the Women's
Liberal League, I saw much. She was a fine speaker, and a very
clear-headed thinker. Her organizing faculty was remarkable, and her
death a year or two ago was a distinct loss to her party. Her home life
was a standing example of the fallacy of the old idea that a woman who
takes up public work must necessarily neglect her family. Mrs. Barbara
Baynton was a woman of a quite different type, clever and emotional, as
one would expect the author of the brilliant but tragic "Bush Studies"
to be. She was strongly opposed to Federation, as, indeed were large
numbers of clever people in New South Wales. Frank Fox (afterwards
connected with The Lone Hand), Bertram Stevens (author of "An Anthology
of Australian Verse"), Judge Backhouse (who was probably the only
Socialist Judge on the Australian Bench), were frequent visitors at
Miss Scott's, and were all interesting people. An afternoon meeting on
effective voting was arranged at the Sydney University, I think, by Dr.
Anderson Stuart. We were charmed with the university and its beautiful
surroundings. Among the visitors that afternoon was Mrs. David, a
charming and well-read woman, whose book describing an expedition to
Funafuti, is delightful. We afterwards dined with her and Professor
David, and spent a pleasant hour with them.

I was not neglectful of other reforms while on this campaign, and found
time to interest myself in the State children's work with which my
friend, Mrs. Garran, was so intimately connected. We went to Liverpool
one day to visit the benevolent institution for men. There were some
hundreds of men there housed in a huge building reminiscent of the
early convict days. If not the whole, parts of it had been built by the
convicts, and the massive stone staircase suggested to our minds the
horrors of convict settlement. I have always resented the injury done
to this new country by the foundation of penal settlements, through
which Botany Bay lost its natural connotation as a habitat for
wonderful flora, and became known only as a place where convicts were
sent for th