4O A Walk from 



fusing this hitherto insoluble element, and blending it 

 harmoniously with the best vitalities of the nation. 

 And this consummation would well repay a special 

 and extraordinary effort. Perhaps this expedient would 

 be the most successful of all that remain untried. A 

 single incident will prove that it is more than a mere 

 theory. Here it is, in substance : 



Some years ago, when the Australian gold fever was 

 hot in the veins of thousands, and fleets of ships were 

 conveying them to that far-off, uncultivated world, a 

 poor old woman landed with the great multitude of 

 rough and reckless men, who were fired to almost 

 frenzy by dreams of ponderous nuggets and golden 

 fortunes. For these they left behind them all the 

 enjoyments, endearments, all the softening sanctities 

 and surroundings of home and social life in England. 

 For these they left mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. 

 There they were, thinly tented in the rain, and the 

 dew, and the mist, a busy, boisterous, womanless camp 

 of diggers and grubbers, roughing-and-tumbling it in 

 the scramble for gold mites, with no quiet sabbath 

 breaks, nor sabbath songs, nor sabbath bells to mea- 

 sure off and sweeten a season of rest. Well, the poor 

 widow, who had her cabin within a few miles of " the 

 diggings," brought with her but few comforts from the 

 old homeland a few simple articles of furniture, the 



