representation except to write an occasional letter to the press.  So I started another novel, which was published serially in The Observer.  Mr. George Bentley, who published it subsequently in book form, changed its title from “Hugh Lindsay’s Guest” to “The Author’s Daughter.”  But my development as a public speaker was more important than the publication of a fourth novel.  Much had been written on the subject of public speaking by men, but so far nothing concerning the capacities of women in that direction.  And yet I think all teachers will agree that girls in the aggregate excel boys in their powers of expression, whether in writing, or in speech, though boys may surpass them in such studies as arithmetic and mathematics.  Yet law and custom have put a bridle on the tongue of women, and of the innumerable proverbs relating to the sex, the most cynical are those relating to her use of language.  Her only qualification for public speaking in old days was that she could scold, and our ancestors imposed a salutary cheek on this by the ducking stool in public, and sticks no thicker than the thumb for marital correction in private.  The writer of the Proverbs alludes to the perpetual dropping of a woman’s tongue as an intolerable nuisance, and declares that it is better to live on the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.  A later writer, describing the virtuous woman, said that on her lips is the law of kindness, and after all this is the real feminine characteristic.  As daughter, sister, wife, and mother—­what does not the world owe to the gracious words, the loving counsel, the ready sympathy which she expresses?  Until recent years, however, these feminine Rifts have been strictly kept for home consumption. and only exercised for the woman’s family and a limited circle of friends.  In 1825, when I first opened my eyes on the world, there were indeed women who displayed an interest in public affairs.  My own mother not only felt the keenest solicitude regarding the passing of the Reform Bill, but she took up her pen, and with two letters to the local press, under the signature of “Grizel Plowter,” showed the advantages of the proposed measure.  But public speaking was absolutely out of the question for women, and though I was the most ambitious of girls, my desire was to write a great book—­not at all to sway an audience.  When I returned from my first visit to England in 1866, I was asked by the committee of the South Australian Institute to write a lecture on my impressions of England, different from the article which had appeared in The Cornhill Magazine under that title, but neither the committee nor myself thought of the possibility of my delivering it.  My good friend, the late Mr. John Howard Clark, Editor of The Register, kindly offered to read it.  I did not go to hear it, but I was told that he had difficulty in reading my manuscript, and that, though he was a beautiful reader, it was not very satisfactory.  So I mentally resolved that if I was again asked I