editor, so John and I carried it on, and then let it die.
At that time I believed in State aid, which had been abolished by the
first elected Parliament of South Australia, although that Parliament
consisted of one-third nominees pledged to vote for its continuance.

CHAPTER V.

NOVELS AND A POLITICAL INSPIRATION.

It was the experience of a depopulated province which led me to write
my first book, "Clara Morison--A Tale of South Australia during the
Gold Fever." I entrusted the M.S. to my friend John Taylor, with whom I
had just had the only tiff in my life. He, through his connection with
The Register, knew that I was writing in The South Australian, trying
to keep it alive, till Mr. Murray decided to let it go, and he told
this to other people. At a subscription ball to which my brother John
took me and my younger sister Mary, she found she had been pointed out
and talked of as the lady who wrote for the newspapers. I did not like
it even to be supposed of myself, but Mary was indignant, and I wrote
an injured letter to my friend. He apologized, and said he thought I
would be proud of doing disinterested work, and he was sorry the
mistake had been made regarding the sister who did it. Of course, I
forgave him. He was the last man in the world to give pain to anyone,
and I highly admired him for his disinterested work on The Register. He
reluctantly accepted 1,000 pounds when the paper was sold. He must have
lost much more through neglect of his own affairs at such a critical
time. He was taking a holiday with his sister Eliza in England and
France, where the beautiful widowed sister was settled as Madam Dubois,
and I asked him to take "Clara Morison" to Smith, Elder & Co.'s, in
London, and to say nothing to anybody about it; but before it was
placed he had to return to Adelaide, and in pursuance of my wishes,
left it with my other good friend, Mr. Bakewell, who also happened to
be visiting England with his family at the time--1853-4. I had an idea
that, as there was so much interest in Australia and its gold, I might
get 100 pounds for the novel. Mr. Bakewell wrote a preface from which I
extract a passage:--"The writer's aim seems to have been to present
some picture of the state of society in South Australia in the years
1851-2, when the discovery of gold in the neighbouring province of
Victoria took place. At this time, the population of South Australia
numbered between seventy and eighty thousand souls,