1!Y I'ROIKSSOIl SiU T. W. K. I)A\II>. K.I5.K., ETC. m 



run this break brought him to Hobart. It is a pathetic 

 story. One is tempted here to parody Kiplin.c;: — 



"How far is Hobart City from a Scottish lad at play! 

 What makes you want to wander there with all the 

 world between? 



Oh mother, call your son ajjain, or else he'll run away." 

 But young Robert had no mother to call him back. She 

 had died seme years before, and so he ran away. How 

 terrible must have been the mental strain and struggle for 

 one so young and so strongly swayed by his affections to 

 break away frcm his father and sister, and seek his fortunes 

 in the great world beyond his ken! 



By the sweat of his brow he earned his daily bread 

 at Edinburgh, but still found time to I'ead. He lead poetry, 

 science, fiction, and philosophy. Later he left Edinburgh 

 to do manual work on a railway in the Nci'th of Scotland, 

 interesting himself in the geological structure of the country 

 as revealed in the cuttings. His good work won him the position 

 cf a ticket clerk, and later he became clerk ai a Railway 

 Goods Department, Glasgow. In 1870, at 25 years of age, he 

 once more showed his enterprise, ambition, and tenacity of 

 purpose by selling all his books, and most other belongings, 

 and emigrating to Victoria. He was engaged as a clerk at 

 Colac. While here, when the first railway line in Tasmania 

 — that from Launceston to Deloraine — had been opened, he 

 received the appointment of clerk in charge of the 

 accountant's department, and soon afterwards was promoted 

 to chief clerk in the Auditor-General's Office. In 1881 he 

 was appointed to the newly-created office of Government 

 Statistician and Registrar-General for Tasmania, a position 

 which he held for 37 years until the time of his death. 



Others can speak with authority on the gi'eat value of 

 his numerous annual volumes of Tasmanian .statistics, of 

 the very important work he accomplished in unifying 

 methods of presenting statistics, methods followed later 

 by statisticians in various pai-ts of Australi;r, on his con- 

 tributions to economic questions relating to Labour and 

 Capital, to the framing of the per capita scheme for the 

 equitable distribution among the States of the Common- 

 wealth (that was being initiated) of the surplus revenues 

 derived from the collection of Customs and excise duties, 

 and the successful advocacy of proportional representatian. 

 One who can speak with authority has *•.! ready spoken of 

 this already in terms of high praise that carry weight. Sir 

 Elliott Lewis, and laiidari a landatis viris sumnm lans. 



