ree-quarters of a century. Barrington's couplet, written as
a prologue at the opening of the Playhouse, Sydney, in 1796, to a play
given by convicts--

True patriots we, for be it understood
We left our country for our country's good--

was clever, but untrue. All experience proves that while it is a
terrible injury to a new country to be settled by convicts, it is a
real injury also to the people from whom they are sent, to shovel out
of sight all their failures, and neither try to lessen their numbers
nor to reclaim them to orderly civil life. It was not till Australia
refused any longer to receive convicts, as Virginia had previously
done, that serious efforts were made to amend the criminal code of
England, or to use reformatory methods first with young and afterwards
with older offenders. Another pleasant trip was one we took to
Parramatta. The Government launch was courteously placed at our
disposal to visit the Parramatta Home for Women, where also we found
some comfortable homes for old couples. The separation of old people
who would prefer to spend the last years of their life together is I
consider, an outrage on society. One of my chief desires has been to
establish such homes for destitute couples in South Australia, and to
every woman who may be appointed as a member of the Destitute Board in
future I appeal to do her utmost to change our methods of treatment
with regard to old couples, so that to the curse of poverty may not be
added the cruelty of enforced separation. Women in New South Wales were
striving for the franchise at that time, and we had the pleasure of
speaking at one of their big meetings. And what fine public meetings
they had in Sydney! People there seemed to take a greater interest in
politics than here, and crowded attendances were frequent at political
meetings, even when there was no election to stir them up. It was a
Sydney lady who produced this amusing Limerick in my honour:--

There was a Grand Dame of Australia
Who proved the block system a failure.
She taught creatures in coats
What to do with their votes,
This Effective Grand Dame of Australia!

The third line will perhaps preclude the necessity for pointing out
that the author was an ardent suffragist! To an enlightened woman also
was probably due the retort to a gentleman's statement that "Miss
Spence was a good man lost," that, "On the contrary she thought she was
a good woman saved." "In what