Without going, so far as a wellknown ex-member of our State Legislature, whose antagonism to the humanitarian treatment of prisoners led him to the belief that “there wasn’t nothin’ in ‘erry-ditty,’ it was all tommy rot,” I still hold to the belief that environment plays the larger part in the formation of character.  Every phase of criminal reform is, I candidly admit, dealing with effects rather than causes.  Effects, however, must be dealt with, and the more humanely they are dealt with the better for society at large.  So long as society shuts its eyes to the social conditions under which the masses of the people live, move, and have their being as tending towards lowering rather than uplifting the individual and the community, the supply of cases for criminal treatment will unfortunately show little tendency to decrease.  The work before reformers of the world is to prevent the creation of criminals by changing the environment of those with criminal tendencies as well as to seek to alleviate the resulting disease by methods of criminal reform.

Many interesting lectures were given by prominent citizens under the auspices of the society, which did a great deal to awaken the public conscience on the important question of criminal reform.  The Rev. J. Day Thompson, who was then in the zenith of his intellectual power and a noble supporter of all things that tended to the uplifting of humanity, dealt with the land question in relation to crime.  He gave a telling illustration of his point—­which I thought equally applicable to the question of environment in relation to prison reform—­that no permanent good could result from social legislation until society recognised and dealt with the root of the social evil, the land question.  “In a lunatic asylum,” he said, “it is the custom to test the sanity of patients by giving them a ladle with which to empty a tub of water standing under a running tap.  ‘How do you decide?’ the warder was asked.  ‘Why, them as isn’t idiots stops the tap.’” It was the Rev. J. Day Thompson who first called me the “Grand Old Woman” of South Australia.  When he left Adelaide for the wider sphere of service open to him in England I felt that we had lost one of the most cultured and able men who had ever come among us, and one whom no community could lose without being distinctly the poorer for his absence.

Just at this time the visit of Dr. and Mrs. Mills created a little excitement in certain circles.  Their lectures on Christian science, both public and private, were wonderfully well attended, and I missed few of them.  I have all my life endeavoured to keep an open mind on these questions, and have been prepared to accept new ideas and new modes of thought.  But, although I found much that was charming in the lectures that swayed the minds of so many of my friends, I found little to convince me that Christian scientists were right and the rest of the world wrong in their interpretation of the meaning of life.  So far