nce more my home was broken up, and with Miss
Gregory I went to live with my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Quilty, in
North Norwood. From then on my life has flowed easily and pleasantly,
marred only by the sadness of farewells of many old friends and
comrades on my life's journey, who one by one have passed "through
Nature to eternity."

Much as I have written during the past 40 years, it was reserved for my
old age to discover within me the power of poetical expression. I had
rhymed in my youth and translated French verse, but until I wrote my
one sonnet, poetry had been an untried field. The one-sided pessimistic
pictures that Australian poets and writers present are false in the
impression they make on the outside world and on ourselves. They lead
us to forget the beauty and the brightness of the world we live in.
What we need is, as Matthew Arnold says of life, "to see Australia
steadily and see it whole." It is not wise to allow the "deadbeat"--the
remittance man, the gaunt shepherd with his starving flocks and herds,
the free selector on an arid patch, the drink shanty where the
rouseabouts and shearers knock down their cheques, the race meeting
where high and low, rich and poor, are filled with the gambler's ill
luck--fill the foreground of the picture of Australian life. These
reflections led me to a protest, in the form of a sonnet published in
The Register some years ago:--

When will some new Australian poet rise
To all the height and glory of his theme?
Nor on the sombre side for ever dream
Our hare, baked plains, our pitiless blue skies,
'Neath which the haggard bushman strains his eyes
To find some waterhole or hidden stream
To save himself and flocks in want extreme!
This is not all Australia! Let us prize
Our grand inheritance! Had sunny Greece
More light, more glow, more freedom, or more mirth?
Ours are wide vistas bathed in purest air--
Youth's outdoor pleasures, Age's indoor peace--
Where could we find a fairer home on earth
Which we ourselves are free to make more fair?

Just as years before my interest had been kindled in the establishment
of our system of State education, and later in the University and
higher education, so more recently has the inauguration of the Froebel
system of kindergarten training appealed most strongly to my reason and
judgment. There was a time in the history of education, long after the
necessity for expert teach