or the family of a brother she had carried on the
strenuous literary work--fiction, biography, criticism, and
history--and when she died at the age of 69 she had not completed the
history of a great publishing house--that of Blackwood. Her life
tallies with mine on many points, but it is not till I have completed
my 84 years that her sad narrative impels me to set down what appears
noteworthy in a life which was begun in similar circumstances, but
which was spent mainly in Australia. The loss of memory which I see in
many who are younger than myself makes me feel that while I can
recollect I should fix the events and the ideals of my life by pen and
ink. Like Mrs. Oliphant, I was born (three years earlier) in the south
of Scotland. Like her I had an admirable mother but she lost hers at
the age of 60, while I kept mine till she was nearly 97. Like Mrs.
Oliphant, I was captivated by the stand made by the Free Church as a
protest against patronage, and like her I shook off the shackles of the
narrow Calvinism of Presbyterianism, and emerged into more light and
liberty. But unlike Mrs. Oliphant, I have from my earliest youth taken
an interest in politics, and although I have not written the tenth part
of what she has done, I have within the last 20 years addressed many
audiences in Australia and America, and have preached over 100 sermons.
My personal influence has been exercised through the voice more
strongly than by the pen, and in the growth and development of South
Australia, to which I came with my parents and brothers and sisters
when I was just 14, and the province not three years old, there have
been opportunities for usefulness which might not have offered if I had
remained in Melrose, in Sir Walter Scott's country.

CHAPTER III.

A BEGINNING AT SEVENTEEN

Perhaps my turn for economics was partly inherited from my mother, and
emphasized by my father having been an unlucky speculator in foreign
wheat, tempted thereto by the sliding scale, which varied from 33/ a
quarter, when wheat was as cheap as it was in 1837, to 1/ a quarter,
when it was 70/ in 1839. It was supposed that my father had made his
fortune when he took his wheat out of bond but losses and deterioration
during seven years, and interest on borrowed money--credit having been
strained to the utmost--brought ruin and insolvency, and he had to go
to South Australia, followed by his wife and family soon after. It
seems strange that this disaste