True patriots we, for be it understood
    We left our country for our country’s good—­

was clever, but untrue.  All experience proves that while it is a terrible injury to a new country to be settled by convicts, it is a real injury also to the people from whom they are sent, to shovel out of sight all their failures, and neither try to lessen their numbers nor to reclaim them to orderly civil life.  It was not till Australia refused any longer to receive convicts, as Virginia had previously done, that serious efforts were made to amend the criminal code of England, or to use reformatory methods first with young and afterwards with older offenders.  Another pleasant trip was one we took to Parramatta.  The Government launch was courteously placed at our disposal to visit the Parramatta Home for Women, where also we found some comfortable homes for old couples.  The separation of old people who would prefer to spend the last years of their life together is I consider, an outrage on society.  One of my chief desires has been to establish such homes for destitute couples in South Australia, and to every woman who may be appointed as a member of the Destitute Board in future I appeal to do her utmost to change our methods of treatment with regard to old couples, so that to the curse of poverty may not be added the cruelty of enforced separation.  Women in New South Wales were striving for the franchise at that time, and we had the pleasure of speaking at one of their big meetings.  And what fine public meetings they had in Sydney!  People there seemed to take a greater interest in politics than here, and crowded attendances were frequent at political meetings, even when there was no election to stir them up.  It was a Sydney lady who produced this amusing Limerick in my honour:—­

    There was a Grand Dame of Australia
    Who proved the block system a failure. 
    She taught creatures in coats
    What to do with their votes,
    This Effective Grand Dame of Australia!

The third line will perhaps preclude the necessity for pointing out that the author was an ardent suffragist!  To an enlightened woman also was probably due the retort to a gentleman’s statement that “Miss Spence was a good man lost,” that, “On the contrary she thought she was a good woman saved.”  “In what way?” he asked.  “Saved for the benefit of her country, instead of having her energies restricted to the advantages of one home,” was the reply.  And for this I have sometimes felt very thankful myself that I have been free to devote what gifts I possess to what I consider best for the advantage and the uplifting of humanity.  Before leaving Sydney I tried once more to find a publisher for “Gathered In,” but was assured that the only novels worth publishing in Australia were sporting or political novels.