Thirty Years in Australia

THIR

urate. On the 4th-and with thankfulness, I mus

t the hills, and the weather, for midsummer, was kind. Twice we made a camp in a shady spot, sprawled on the grass while the horse grazed and the billy boiled, and ate our picnic meal luxuriously; and for miles we walked beside and around the buggy, fern hunting and curiosity gathering on behalf of the sister-in-law, whose main interest in Australia was centred in these things. It was our intention to make a holiday of the occasion, and we carried the intention out. But, oh, how tired we were when at last we sighted our destination!

that blue which flames celestial pink in parts when the sun goes down. An awful trap to the amateur Jehu was that gap in those days; we realise it now far better than we did then. A metalled road, cut out of the hillsides and fenced, now winds through it, but it still calls for a good driver and a strong brake. We used to blunder down it, as down a wrecked staircase, in the darkest nights, and think nothing of it; no, although we were shown the spot where a coach, whose horses missed their footing, was hurled down the ravine to utter smithereens with all hands. The fact was that in those days and in that part of the country we had to do these foolhardy things all the time, or we should never have got about at all.

n depends, was equal to its responsibilities (the owner was to be trusted to see to that). So we arrived safely at the door of what looked like the principal inn-the place and we

ter breakfast in getting the buggy re-packed, getting the keys of the house and church, and driving thither-through the tiny town, over the bridge spanning the willowy creek, and up the hilly road-firmly resolved to sit down by our own hearthstone forthwith, for good and all. But we always did that. In all our movings and re-f

ring; their overlapping wreaths were enormous; their masses of white gleamed right across the valley, visible from the Gap road. Everything one planted seemed to flourish there, and particularly the vineyards on some of the hillsides. Fine wines went out from that little town, to win medals and honourable mentions at the industrial exhibitions of the world. The manufacturer combined the professions of vigneron and doctor-in our time the only doctor for many miles around. He was a German gentleman who had left his country to escape some difficulty connected with military service, and was debarred from returning thither by the knowledge that he would thereby land himself in a fortress. Not that he had any hankerings for the Fatherland; he might have been born where we found him, so attached was he to his little town and the interests he had gathered about him; he lived there for over forty years, I believe, and is buried there, in the hill cemetery above our old home. Cut off as he seemed to be from the intellectual wor

armfuls of maiden-hair for church decoration, some fronds of which, measured on the dining-room table, spanned the whole width from side to side. One Christmas Eve I made the church a b

em with our English eyes and notions; the stamp of the mind and quality of the first incumbent was plain in every direction (he was an Oxford man, expatriated for his health). A year or two ago I was there again; it and the house had faded and been ne

a frying pan, together with smaller trifles, all in his own arms and pockets-for he never minds what he carries or where he carries it-the sister-in-law and I having prepared a fire in his absence. Shortly afterwards we enjoyed the meal which stands out amid the records of the past as

gularly supplied with all necessary goods; so that the explanation of our various dabblings in the art of cabinet making will at once occur to the reader. We had expended the capital of ￡50 with which we started housekeeping, and, if I remember rightly, the parson's stipend did not exceed ￡250 per annum. In a parish of the dimensions of this one, horses (as distinct from a horse) were indispensable, and they had to be fed and shod. A buggy (second hand) and a piano (on time payment) were here added to the establishment; likewise a second baby and a nurse-girl. To

rk to dispute the claims of the house and family, but to add something to the family resources when they threatened to give out. I had no time for more, until on

ratic systems of church government; besides the multifarious work at home-making and mending, cooking and nursing, and, as it appears, building sideboards and dining-tables. Moreover, the Free and Compulsory Education Act had come into force (January 1873), and as the State had to be satisfied that our little nursemaid, who was within school age, was being educated according to

ith the subject leaves me in no doubt as to which of the clerical pair is in the shafts and which in the lead. It is not the parson who, to use the phrase so often in his mouth, bears the burden and heat of the day, but the uncomplaining drudge who backs him at all points, and too often makes him selfish and idle by her readiness to do his work as well as her own. Under colonial and "disestablished" conditions, he is not largely representative of the class from which our

a year until the baker's dozen was reached, if not passed. The way she "kept" this family was such that I never saw a dirty child or a soiled table-cloth or a slatternly touch

was the merest trifle of a task, compared with those she hourly struggled with; but it was the one straw too many that breaks the over-loaded back. She looked at him in silence for a moment, flung out her arms wildly, and, exclaiming "I can do no more!" went mad upon the spot. Sh

propriately presided over by dignitaries of the Church. They stood up, one after another, to air their views. "I propose," said a worthy canon, with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "that every cle

ch I have never since seen reason to alter, that the less a clergyman's wife meddles with her husband's business (except between themselves) the better, not only for her but for all parties. After I could plead the claims of a profession of my own, my position in the scheme of things was finally and comfortably defined. Parishes, like clerical husbands, when they tyrannise, do it unconsci

oup-tickets and all the rest of it, for my own pleasure, parish work, when it became my business, was not at all irksome

our work. Recruits arrived from far and near, some of whom could read music, and we spread ourselves in an occasional anthem. There have been, and are, many thousands of choirs as pleased with themselves as we were, but never was there one more harmonious, in every sense of the word. To the

rubbed and scrubbed on door-mats; and never did an evening-party show itself better bred. For that is what the choir practice came to-a "musical evening" once a week. We fell into the habit of clearing off the chants and hymns rather hastily, and devoting the bulk of our ever-extending time to experiments in the higher forms of part-singing. We were not experts, any of us, but we made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge, and ended by so distinguishing ourselves that the f

th Mass straight off as easily as look at it, if it had never seen the thing before, would feel insulted at any comparison between their work and ours; but often, when I am listening to the evening ant

s," said G., turning to me. I looked, and knew-one of those men who used to walk so far o' nights to attend choir practice, after working at his mine all day-seven-or eight-and-twenty years before. We clasped hands with some emotion and looked at each other, a

spered, and that they will read these