oroughly upright in word and deed, and your
knowledge of the Scriptures equal to that of many students of Divinity,
so should you ever become a teacher you have nothing to fear. You will
be able to undertake both the useful and the ornamental branches of
education--French, Italian, and Music you thoroughly understand. I feel
conscious that you will succeed. Please to remember me to your
excellent mother, and with love to Miss Spence and my darling Mary,
believe me, my beloved Catherine, your affectionate friend and teacher.
Sarah Phin.

My knowledge of music was not great, even in those days, but I could
teach beginners for two or three years with fair success. We thought
that my mother and the two eldest girls could start a school, and
brought out with us a good selection of schoolbooks, bought from Oliver
J. Boyd. Edinburgh, superior to the English books obtainable here,
which we used up in time; but we dared not launch out into such a
venture in 1840, and my sister Jessie had no desire to teach at all.
The years at Brownhill Creek and West terrace were the most unhappy of
my life. I suffered from the want of some intellectual activity, and
from the sense of frustrated ambition and religious despair. The few
books we had, or which we could borrow, I read over and over again.
Aikin's "British Poets," a gift from Uncle John Spence, and Goldsmith's
complete works, a school prize of my brother William's, were thoroughly
mastered, and the Waverley novels down to "Quentin Durward" were well
absorbed. I read in Chambers's Journal of daily governesses getting a
shilling an hour, and I told my friend, Mrs. Haining, that I would go
out for 6d. an hour. Although she disliked that way of putting it, it
was really on that basis that I had made my beginning when I reached
the age of 17. In the meantime I had taught my younger sister Mary
(afterwards Mrs. W. J. Wren) all I knew, and in the columns of The
South Australian I wrote an occasional letter or a few verses. Through
Mr. George Tinline we made the acquaintance of Mrs. Samuel Stephens her
brother, Thomas Hudson Beare, and his family, who had all come out in
the Duke of York, and lived six months on Kangaroo Island before South
Australia was proclaimed a British province. I have been mixed up so
much with this family that it is often supposed that they were
relatives, but it was not so. Samuel Stephens had died from an accident
two years after his marriage to a lady much olde