boy of 14. He was
then an orphan, my youngest and beloved sister Mary having recently
died and left her two children to my care. My teacher thought me the
more apt pupil, but it was really due more to my command of English
than to my knowledge of Latin that I was able to get at the meaning of
Virgil and Horace. When it came to Latin composition I was no better
than the boy of 14. Before the death of my sister the family invested
in land in Trinity street, College Town, and built a house. Mother had
planned the house she moved into when I was six months old, and she
delighted in the task, though she said it seemed absurd to build a
house in her seventy-ninth year. But she lived in it from January,
1870, till December, 1887, and her youngest daughter lived in it for
only ten months. Before that time I had embarked with my friend, Miss
Clark, on one of the greatest enterprises of my life--one which led to
so much that my friends are apt to say that, if I am recollected at
all, it will be in connection with the children of the State and not
with electoral reform. But I maintain now, as I maintained then, that
the main object of my life is proportional representation, or, to use
my brother John's term, effective voting.

CHAPTER XI

WARDS OF THE STATE.

In a little book which the State Children's Council requested me to
write as a memorial of the great work of Miss C. E. Clark on her
retirement at the age of 80, I have given an account of the movement
from the beginning down to 1907, which had its origin in South
Australia under the leadership of Miss Clark. When I was on my way cut
from England, Miss Clark wrote a letter to The Register, suggesting
that the destitute, neglected, or orphaned children should be removed
from the Destitute Asylum and placed in natural homes with respectable
people; but the great wave which came over England about that time for
building industrial schools and reformatories affected South Australia
also, and the idea was that, though the children should be removed from
the older inmates, it should be to an institution. Land was bought and
plans were drawn up for an industrial school at Magill, five miles from
Adelaide, when Miss Clark came to me and asked me to help her to take a
different course. She enlisted Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Colton and Mrs.
(afterwards Lady) Davenport in the cause, and we arranged for a
deputation to the Minister; Howard Clark, Neville Blyth, and Mr. C. B.
You