discover that the cough was from the lungs. It passed away with the
cold weather, and I cannot say that I have had any illness since. My
father died of decline, but, if he had been more fortunate, I think he
would have lived much longer. Probably my mother's life was prolonged
beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle
life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must
have helped me. There were no special precautions against infection in
those days: but no other member of the family took it. and the alarm
about me was three years after Agnes's death.

But to go on to those early days of the forties. There were two
families with whom we were intimate. Mr. George Tinline (who had been
clerk to my fathers' old friend, Williarn Rutherford, of Jedburgh), who
was in the bank of South Australia when in 1839, my father went to put
our small funds in safety, introduced us to a beautiful young widow,
Mrs. Sharpe, and her sisters Eliza and Harriet, and her brother, John
Taylor. Harriet afterwards married Edward Stirling, a close friend of
my brother-in-law, Andrew Murray, and I was a great deal interested in
the Stirlings and their eight children. Mr. William Bakewell, of
Bartley & Bakewell, solicitors, married Jane Warren of Springfield,
Barossa, and I was a familiar friend of their five children. In one
house I was "Miss Spence, the storyteller," in the other "Miss Spence,
the teller of tales!" Some of the tales appeared long after as
Christmas stories in The Adelaide Observer, but my young hearers
preferred the oral narrative, with appropriate gestures and emphasis,
and had no scruple about making faces, to anything printed in books. I
took great liberties with what I had read and sometimes invented all.
It was a part of their education, probably--certainly, it was a part
of mine, and it gave me a command of language which helped me when I
became a public speaker. My brother-in-law's newspaper furnished an