My dearest Catherine—­Our mutual friend, Mrs. Duncan, told me that you were not to sail for Australia till next month, and I have been thinking if my poor testimonial to your worth and abilities could be of any service to you I ought to give it but how can I trust myself?—­for could any one read what I feel my heart dictates it would be thought absurd.  You were always one of the greatest ornaments of my school, best girl and the best scholar, and from the time you could put three letters together you have evinced a turn for teacing—­so clear-headed and so patient, and so thoroughly upright in word and deed, and your knowledge of the Scriptures equal to that of many students of Divinity, so should you ever become a teacher you have nothing to fear.  You will be able to undertake both the useful and the ornamental branches of education—­French, Italian, and Music you thoroughly understand.  I feel conscious that you will succeed.  Please to remember me to your excellent mother, and with love to Miss Spence and my darling Mary, believe me, my beloved Catherine, your affectionate friend and teacher.  Sarah Phin.

My knowledge of music was not great, even in those days, but I could teach beginners for two or three years with fair success.  We thought that my mother and the two eldest girls could start a school, and brought out with us a good selection of schoolbooks, bought from Oliver J. Boyd.  Edinburgh, superior to the English books obtainable here, which we used up in time; but we dared not launch out into such a venture in 1840, and my sister Jessie had no desire to teach at all.  The years at Brownhill Creek and West terrace were the most unhappy of my life.  I suffered from the want of some intellectual activity, and from the sense of frustrated ambition and religious despair.  The few books we had, or which we could borrow, I read over and over again.  Aikin’s “British Poets,” a gift from Uncle John Spence, and Goldsmith’s complete works, a school prize of my brother William’s, were thoroughly mastered, and the Waverley novels down to “Quentin Durward” were well absorbed.  I read in Chambers’s Journal of daily governesses getting a shilling an hour, and I told my friend, Mrs. Haining, that I would go out for 6d. an hour.  Although she disliked that way of putting it, it was really on that basis that I had made my beginning when I reached the age of 17.  In the meantime I had taught my younger sister Mary (afterwards Mrs. W. J. Wren) all I knew, and in the columns of The South Australian I wrote an occasional letter or a few verses.  Through Mr. George Tinline we made the acquaintance of Mrs. Samuel Stephens her brother, Thomas Hudson Beare, and his family, who had all come out in the Duke of York, and lived six months on Kangaroo Island before South Australia was proclaimed a British province.  I have been mixed up so much with this family that it is often supposed that they were relatives, but it was not so.  Samuel Stephens had died from an