audience of 150 in the same town and on the same subject.  The town, moreover, is in a Parliamentary district, in which every candidate at the recent general election—­and there were seven of them—­supported effective voting.  Far down in the south I went to a little village containing seven churches, which accounted (said the local doctor) for the extreme backwardness of its inhabitants.  “They have so many church affairs to attend to that there is no time to think of anything else.”  At the close of this lecturing tour The Register undertook the public count through its columns, which did so much to bring the reform before the people of South Australia.  Public interest was well aroused on the matter before my long projected trip to America took shape.  “Come and teach us how to vote,” my American friends had been writing to me for years; but I felt that it was a big order for a little woman of 68 to undertake the conversion to electoral reform of 60 millions of the most conceited people in the world.  Still I went.  I left Adelaide bound for America on April 4, 1893, as a Government Commissioner and delegate to the Great World’s Fair Congresses in Chicago.

In Melbourne and Sydney on my way to the boat for San Francisco I found work to do.  Melbourne was in the throes of the great financial panic, when bank after bank closed its doors; but the people went to church as usual.  I preached in the Unitarian Church on the Sunday, and lectured in Dr. Strong’s Australian Church on Monday.  In Sydney Miss Rose Scott had arranged a drawing-room meeting for a lecture on effective voting.  A strong convert I made on that occasion was Mr. (afterwards Sr.) Walker.  A few delightful hours I spent at his charming house on the harbour with his family, and was taken by them to see many beauty spots.  Those last delightful days in Sydney left me with pleasant Australian memories to carry over the Pacific.  When the boat sailed on April 17, the rain came down in torrents.  Some interesting missionaries were on board.  One of them, the venerable Dr. Brown, who had been for 30 years labouring in the Pacific, introduced me to Sir John Thurston.  Mr. Newell was returning to Samoa after a two years’ holiday in England.  He talked much, and well about his work.  He had 104 students to whom he was returning.  He explained that they became missionaries to other more benighted and less civilized islands, where their knowledge of the traditions and customs of South Sea Islanders made them invaluable as propagandists.  The writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, had prepared me to find in the Samoans a handsome and stalwart race, with many amiable traits, and I was not disappointed.  The beauty of the scenery appealed to me strongly, and I doubt whether “the light that never was on sea or land” could have rivalled the magic charm of the one sunrise we saw at Samoa.  During the voyage I managed to get in one lecture, and many talks on effective voting.  Had I been superstitious my arrival in San Francisco on Friday, May 12, might have boded ill for the success of my mission, but I was no sooner ashore than my friend Alfred Cridge took me in charge, and the first few days were a whirl of meetings, addresses and interviews.