Chapter I: Foreword

It has been suggested to me, O people of Adelaide, that, should any of you deign to glance through these pages, you will misunderstand them--that is to say, you will believe them to have been written with malicious intent. What the public may think or say troubles me little, but for the benefit of one or two persons here who merit consideration, I emphatically declare that this is not so. Adelaide has crushed my youthful ambitions, and, possibly, narrowed my ideas--and you, her people, have done your best (by force of example, and other methods) to root out any broad or human sentiment that was in me. So that I have nothing for which to thank you, and I owe you nothing--not even the merest courtesy.

But the feeling of bitterness that characterised my first unhappy moments here has long since passed, and there is left only resignation, and perhaps a faint hope that some day I may sail “beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars” forever. It may be argued that I have taken a near and dear--very near and very dear--relation from among you, and to that my only answer can be that he did not choose his birthplace, and that it is his misfortune--a misfortune which, however, has happily produced no lasting effect.

THISTLE ANDERSON.

“STRAMSHALL,”
NORTH ADELAIDE,
_April 12th, 1905._

CONTENTS