arriages at all, and considered
it a disrespect to the first wife's memory, even though a decent
interval had elapsed. When he wrote to me about it I took quite a
different view. He said it was the kindest and the wisest letter I had
ever written in my life, and he knew I had loved his late wife very
much. He came to thank me, and to tell me that he had always wished
that I should be in England at the time he was there, and that he was
going in a P. & 0. boat immediately after his marriage. Although Mr.
Stirling had promised to pay my passage, I hesitated about going. There
were my mother, who was 72, and my guardianship of the Duvals to think
about. I had also undertaken the oversight of old Mrs. Stephens, the
widow of one of the early proprietors of The Register. These objections
were all overruled. I still hesitated. "I cannot go unless I have money
to spend," I urged. "Let me do that," was the generous reply.--"I have
left you 500 pounds in my will. Let me have the pleasure of giving you
something while I live." I was not too proud to owe that memorable
visit to England to my two good friends. John Taylor had put into my
hands on board the Goolwa, in which I sailed, a draft for 200 pounds
for my spending money, and in the new will he made after his marriage
he bequeathed me 300 pounds. I said "Goodby" to him, with good wishes
for his health and happiness. I never saw him again. He took a sickly
looking child on his knee when crossing the Isthmus of Suez--there was
no canal in 1864--to relieve a weary mother. The child had smallpox,
and my friend took it and died of it. He was being buried beside his
first wife at Brighton when the Goolwa sailed up the Channel after a
passage of 14 weeks--as long as that of the Palmyra 25 years
before--and the first news we heard was that Miss Taylor had lost a
brother, the children a favourite uncle, and I, a friend. It was a sad
household, but the Bakewells were in London on business connected with
some claims of discovery of the Moonta Mines, and they took me to their
house in Palace Gardens. Kensington, till I could arrange to go to my
aunt's in Scotland. All our plans about seeing people and places
together were, of course, at an end. I was to go "a lone hand." Mrs.
Taylor had a posthumous son, who never has set foot in Australia. She
married a second time, an English clergyman named Knight, and had
several sons, but she has never revisited Adelaide, although she has
many relativ