a wealthy man, did not ask any payment from The Fortnightly. but he gave me 10 pounds and thanked me for stepping in to his assistance when he needed it.  He said that my novel had been the subject of a great deal of discussion in his house.  I asked, “Why?” He replied, “The uncle and the nieces, of course.”  I thought no more of it till the death of Mr. Wilson revealed that he had left his estate to the charities of Melbourne.  Then my brother told me that when he was in England in 1877 Mr. Wilson had told him that it was seldom that a novel had any influence over a man’s conduct, but that reading his sister’s novel had set him thinking, and had made him alter his will.  He did not think it to the advantage of his nieces to be made rich, and he would leave his money to Victoria and Melbourne, where he had made it.  I was the innocent cause of disappointing the nieces, for I think I made it clear that the uncle did very wrongly.  But when I see 5,000 pounds a year distributed among Melbourne charities, and larger gifts for the building of a new hospital, I cannot help thinking that these are the results of Mr. Wilson reading “Mr. Hogarth’s Will” and it may be that other similar trusts are the results of Mr. Wilson’s action.

Another literary success I had during that visit to England.  I went to Smith, Elder, & Co. to ask if I could not get anything for the shilling edition of “Tender and True,” and was answered in the negative; but I had not talked ten minutes with Mr. Williams before he said that if I would put these ideas into shape, he thought he could get an article accepted by The Cornhill Magazine.  “An Australian’s Impressions of England” was approved by the editor, and appeared in The Cornhill for January 1866, and for that I received 12 pounds, the best-paid work I had ever had up to that time.  The Saturday Review said of “Mr. Hogarth’s Will” that there was no haziness about money matters in it such as is too common among lady writers.  Mr. Bentley advised me to give my name, and not to sell my copyright; but the latter has been of no value to me; 500 copies of a three-volume novel exhausted the likely demand.  I got 12 copies to give to friends, and one copy I gave to Mr. Hare.  His daughters were a little amused to see their father in a novel, and as the book was in the circulating library their friends and acquaintances used to ask, “Is that really your papa that it is intended for?” I did not at the time think of facing anybody in England, but I had been both amused and annoyed with the portraits I was supposed to have drawn from real people in and about Adelaide—­often people I had never seen and had not beard of.  “But Harris is Ellis to the life,” said my old Aunt Brodie of Morphett Vale.  “Miss Withing is my sister-in-law,” said another.  Neither of these people had I seen.  Of course, Mr. Reginald was Mr. John Taylor, the only squatter I knew, but I myself was not identified with my heroine Clara Morison.  I was Margaret Elliott, the girl