Popinjay was restive for her foal, shut up at home, and grew so fractious that I had to relinquish argument and give myself fully to the delight of handling her as she reefed and plunged. At length I gave her her head at full gallop down the long steep incline, feeling sure that she could keep on her feet and I in my saddle on her round slippery back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

THERE IS ENGLAND.

My dear Editor has gone away out of the Colony—or State as we call it since Federation. Perhaps he grew tired of taking himself out of himself as well as myself out of me to find acceptance. He has gone to a different kind of paper, and I am left without a patron. It must be grand to be free to write what you like, happier still to be so self-satisfied as to like what you write.

One amelioration is mine. I have lately received from the stately publishing house of McMurwood a letter in character. It is now time for my book to go into a final form and become a CLASSIC. Surprise number 1: as I thought only Vergil, Homer, Aristophanes and Co. were CLASSICS and that to couple the word with a LOCAL CACKLER would be blasphemy or caricature. Surprise number 2: that I could have any say in a re-issue. Could the book be stopped altogether? Through imaginary characters being identified with real people I was accused of belittling my connections, but if no more books were forthcoming those in circulation would die of old age and disappear and we could all sink to peace. In future I could have a nom de plume, carefully guarded, so that my attempts could be taken on their own demerits without the impetus of scandal. Conventional people and I would not then suffer from a relationship uncongenial to both parties and for which neither is responsible.

Messrs. McMurwood met my wishes as if I were a real person—an experience to give me back a shred of self-confidence. Honesty and decency are basic necessities, but good manners are to the sensibilities as cream and honey to the tongue. Certainly I can withdraw the book. Would I care for a number of the remaining copies for my own use? No, not one. And that was that. If only I had known this after the first edition: but a number of LOCAL CACKLERS had given me the benefit of their EXPERIENCE with MSS bought and published on Australia’s own publishing hook. They had been given ten or twenty pounds, and though the works in some instances sold as well or better than mine, the authors were not entitled to nor did they receive a penny beyond the first amount, nor were they allowed any control even in revising subsequent editions. There was a case where learning by another’s EXPERIENCE resulted in knowledge as limiting as ignorance.

I am now twenty. The years have passed droughtily in a personal as well as a meteorological sense. I feel so terribly old. I have dried up in this barren gully while there are such glorious places elsewhere. If only I had a view of mountains or of the sea in storm, or in sun too calm for waves but glinting like the silver gum leaves in the noonday light, this would be to know wealth despite money poverty.