It was the same lady who on another occasion, when
one of the juvenile members of the party asked whether poets had to pay
for poetical licence, wittily replied, "No, my dear, but their readers
do!" Although so much of my time has been spent in public work, I have
by no means neglected or despised the social side of life. Visits to my
friends have always been delightful to me, and I have felt as much
interested in the domestic virtues of my many acquaintances as I have
been an admirer of their grasp of literature, politics, or any branch
of the arts or sciences in which they have been interested. This
seaside visit had been a welcome break in a year that had brought me a
new occupation as a member of the Destitute Board, had given me the
experience of a political campaign, had witnessed the framing of the
Constitution for the Commonwealth 'neath the Southern Cross, and had
seen effective voting advance from the academic stage into the realm of
practical politics. During the year Mrs. Young and I addressed together
26 meetings on this subject. One of the most interesting was at the
Blind School, North Adelaide. The keenness with which this audience
gripped every detail of the explanation showed us how splendidly they
had risen above their affliction. I was reminded of Helen Keller, the
American girl, who at the age of 21 months had lost sight and hearing,
and whom I had met in Chicago during my American visit, just before she
took her degree at Harvard University.

To all peacelovers the years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the
South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less
degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has
always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to
my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether
unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the
publication of his book "Oceana," after his visit here in the
seventies. His indictment of England for her treatment of the Boers
from the earliest days of her occupation of Cape Colony was too
powerful to be ignored. I felt it to be impossible that so great a
historian as Froude should make such grave charges on insufficient
evidence. The annexation of 1877, so bitterly condemned by him,
followed by the treaty of peace of 1881, with its famous "suzerainty"
clause, was, I think, but a stepping stone to the war which was said to
have embittered the last