and to good causes.  I was able to keep a dear little State child at school for two years after the regulation age, and I was amply repaid by seeing her afterwards an honoured wife and mother, able to assist her children and their companions with their lessons.  I helped some lame dogs over the stile.  One among them was a young American of brilliant scholastic attainments, who was the victim of hereditary alcoholism.  His mother, a saintly and noble prohibitionist worker, whom I afterwards met in America, had heard of me, and wrote asking me to keep a watchful eye on her boy.  This I did for about 12 months, and found him employment.  He held a science degree, and was an authority on mineralogy, metallurgy, and kindred subjects.  During this speculative period he persuaded me to plunge (rather wildly for me) in mining shares.  I plunged to the extent of 500 pounds, and I owe it to the good sense and practical ability of my nephew that I lost no more heavily than I did, for he paid 100 pounds to let me off my bargain.

My protege continued to visit me weekly, and we wrote to one another once a week or oftener.  The books I lent to him I know to this day by their colour and the smell of tobacco.  I wrote to his mother regularly, and consulted with his good friend, Mr. Waterhouse, over what was best to be done.  One bad outburst he had when he had got some money through me to pay off liabilities.  I recollect his penitent, despairing confession, with the reference to Edwin Arnold’s poem

    He who died at Azun gave
    This to those who dug his grave.

The time came when I felt I could hold him no longer, although that escapade was forgiven, and I determined to send him to his mother—­not without misgivings about what she might have still to suffer.  He wrote to me occasionally.  His health was never good, and I attribute the craving for drink and excitement a good deal to physical causes; but at the same time I am sure that he could have withstood it by a more resolute will.  The will is the character—­it is the real man.  When people say that the first thing in education is to break the will, they make a radical mistake.  Train the will to work according to the dictates of an enlightened conscience, for it is all we have to trust to for the stability of character.  My poor lad called me his Australian mother.  When I saw his real mother, I wondered more and more what sort of a husband she had, or what atavism Edward drew from to produce a character so unlike hers.  I heard nothing from herself of what she went through, but from her friends I gathered that he had several outbreaks, and cost her far more than she could afford.  She paid everything that he owed in Adelaide, except her debt to me, but that I was repaid after her death in 1905, and she always felt that I had been a true friend to her wayward son.  I recollect one day my friend coming on his weekly visit with a face of woe to tell me he had seen a man in dirt and rags, with half a shirt, who