My journalistic work after my return was neither so regular nor so profitable as before I left Adelaide.  The bank failures had affected me rather badly, and financially my outlook was anything but rosy in the year 1895.  There was, however, plenty of public work open to me, and, in addition to the many lectures I gave in various parts of the State on effective voting, I became a member of the Hospital Commission, appointed that year by the Kingston Government to enquire into the trouble at the Adelaide Hospital.  That same year saw a decided step taken in connection with effective voting, and in July a league was formed, which has been in existence ever since.  I was appointed the first President, my brother John became secretary pro tem, and Mr. A. W. Piper the first treasurer.  I felt at last that the reform was taking definite shape, and looked hopefully to its future.  The following year was especially interesting to the women of South Australia, and, indeed, to suffragists all over the world, for at the general election of 1896 women, for the first time in Australia, had the right to vote.  New Zealand had preceded us with this reform, but the first election in this State found many women voters fairly well equipped to accept their responsibilities as citizens of the State.  But in the full realization by the majority of women of their whole duties of citizenship I have been distinctly disappointed.  Not that they have been on the whole less patriotic and less zealous than men voters; but, like their brothers, they have allowed their interest in public affairs to stop short at the act of voting, as if the right to vote were the beginning and the end of political life.  There has been too great a tendency on the part of women to allow reform work—­particularly women’s branches of it—­to be done by a few disinterested and public-spirited women.  Not only is the home the centre of woman’s sphere, as it should be, but in too many cases it is permitted to be its limitation.  The larger social life has been ignored, and women have consequently failed to have the effect on public life of which their political privilege is capable.

At the close of a second lecturing tour through the State, during which I visited and spoke at most of the village settlements, I received an invitation from the Women’s Land Reform League to attend a social gathering at the residence of Miss Sutherland, Clark street, Norwood.  The occasion was my seventy-first birthday, and my friends had chosen that day (October 31, 1896) to mark their appreciation of my public services.  There were about 30 of the members present, all interesting by reason of their zealous care for the welfare of the State.  Their President (Mrs. C. Proud) presented me, on behalf of the members, with a lady’s handbag, ornamented with a silver plate, bearing my name, the date of the presentation, and the name of the cause for which I stood.  From that day the little bag has been the inseparable companion of all my wanderings, and a constant reminder of the many kind friends who, with me, had realized that “love of country is one of the loftiest virtues which the Almighty has planted in the human heart.”  That association was the first in South Australia to place effective voting on its platform.