the management of the paper until the time of stress was over.

When Andrew Murray obtained employment on The Argus as commercial
editor, he left his twice-a-week newspaper in the charge of Mr. W. W.
Whitridge, my brother John, and myself. If anything was needed to be
written on State aid to religion I was to do it, as Mr. Whitridge was
opposed to it. This lasted three months. The next quarter there were no
funds for the editor. so John and I carried it on, and then let it die.
At that time I believed in State aid, which had been abolished by the
first elected Parliament of South Australia, although that Parliament
consisted of one-third nominees pledged to vote for its continuance.




CHAPTER V.



NOVELS AND A POLITICAL INSPIRATION.


It was the experience of a depopulated province which led me to write
my first book, "Clara Morison--A Tale of South Australia during the
Gold Fever." I entrusted the M.S. to my friend John Taylor, with whom I
had just had the only tiff in my life. He, through his connection with
The Register, knew that I was writing in The South Australian, trying
to keep it alive, till Mr. Murray decided to let it go, and he told
this to other people. At a subscription ball to which my brother John
took me and my younger sister Mary, she found she had been pointed out