before I went to school every morning, for
which I had to prepare myself and the younger children, and to which we
had to walk two miles. I had to feed thirty calves and wash the breakfast
dishes. On returning from school in the afternoon, often in a state of
exhaustion from walking in the blazing sun, I had the same duties over
again, and in addition boots to clean and home lessons to prepare for the
morrow. I had to relinquish my piano practice for want of time.

Ah, those short, short nights of rest and long, long days of toil! It
seems to me that dairying means slavery in the hands of poor people who
cannot afford hired labour. I am not writing of dairy-farming, the
genteel and artistic profession as eulogized in leading articles of
agricultural newspapers and as taught in agricultural colleges. I am
depicting practical dairying as I have lived it, and seen it lived, by
dozens of families around me.

It takes a great deal of work to produce even one pound of butter fit for
market. At the time I mention it was 3d. and 4d. per lb., so it was much
work and small pay. It was slaving and delving from morning till
night--Sundays, week-days, and holidays, all alike were work-days to us.

Hard graft is a great leveller. Household drudgery, woodcutting, milking,
and gardening soon roughen the hands and dim the outside polish. When the
body is wearied with much toil the desire to cultivate the mind, or the
cultivation it has already received, is gradually wiped out. Thus it was
with my parents. They had dropped from swelldom to peasantism. They were
among and of the peasantry. None of their former acquaintances came
within their circle now, for the iron ungodly hand of class distinction
has settled surely down upon Australian society--Australia's democracy is
only a tradition of the past.

I say naught against the lower life. The peasantry are the bulwarks of
every nation. The life of a peasant is, to a peasant who is a peasant
with a peasant's soul, when times are good and when seasons smile, a
grand life. It is honest, clean, and wholesome. But the life of a peasant
to me is purgatory. Those around me worked from morning till night and
then enjoyed their well-earned sleep. They had but two states of
existence--work and sleep.

There was a third part in me which cried out to be fed. I longed for the
arts. Music was a passion with me. I borrowed every book in the
neighbourhood and stole hours from rest to read them. This