In the agitation for the public ownership of the tramways, I was glad to take a share.  The private ownership of monopolies is indefensible, and my American experiences of the injustice of the system strengthened my resolve to do my utmost to prevent the growth of the evil in South Australia.  My attitude on the question alienated a number of friends, both from me personally and from effective voting, so intolerant had people become of any opposition to their own opinions.  The result of the referendum was disappointing, and, I shall always consider, a grave reflection on a democratic community which permits a referendum to be taken under a system of plural voting which makes the whole proceeding a farce.  But the citizens of Adelaide have need to be grateful to the patriotic zeal of those who, led by the late Cornelius Proud fought for the public ownership of the tramways.

These years of activity were crossed by sickness and sorrow.  For the first time in a long life, which had already extended almost a decade beyond the allotted span, I became seriously ill.  To be thus laid low by sickness was a deep affliction to one of my active temperament; but, if sickness brings trouble, it often brings joy in the tender care and appreciation of hosts of friends, and this joy I realized to the fullest extent.  The following year (1904) was darkened by the tragic death of my ward, and once more my home was broken up, and with Miss Gregory I went to live with my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Quilty, in North Norwood.  From then on my life has flowed easily and pleasantly, marred only by the sadness of farewells of many old friends and comrades on my life’s journey, who one by one have passed “through Nature to eternity.”

Much as I have written during the past 40 years, it was reserved for my old age to discover within me the power of poetical expression.  I had rhymed in my youth and translated French verse. but until I wrote my one sonnet, poetry had been an untried field.  The one-sided pessimistic pictures that Australian poets and writers present are false in the impression they make on the outside world and on ourselves.  They lead us to forget the beauty and the brightness of the world we live in.  What we need is, as Matthew Arnold says of life, “to see Australia steadily and see it whole.”  It is not wise to allow the “deadbeat”—­the remittance man, the gaunt shepherd with his starving flocks and herds, the free selector on an arid patch, the drink shanty where the rouseabouts and shearers knock down their cheques, the race meeting where high and low, rich and poor, are filled with the gambler’s ill luck—­fill the foreground of the picture of Australian life.  These reflections led me to a protest, in the form of a sonnet published in The Register some years ago:—­