Mr. Hogarth's Will

by Catherine Helen Spence

"It is well that Grant goes out of his own district," said Brandon, "for he would not stand a chance there; and now he is promising to those strangers anything and everything. With all Grant's aristocratic feelings, and his wife's too, which are still stronger, their desire that he should have a seat in the Assembly, now that McIntyre is in, seems to drag him into as low depths as any one. I cannot see why they should be so anxious about it, unless it is that, since they cannot afford to go home, they want to take as good a position here as any of their neighbours. Grant's affairs will suffer if he has to be so much in Melbourne, and at best he will make a very fourth-rate legislator."

"I think he is naturally 'indifferent honest,'" said Francis. "At least, he is disposed to be honest, but canvassing is very different work here as well as in Britain."

"You should really get into our Assembly, Frank," said Brandon, "to give the natives here the benefit of your experience. How great you would be on a point of order or a question of privilege!"

"I wish Francis had time to give to parliamentary duties," said Jane. "I live in hopes that when Mr. —— returns, he may try his fortune in the political world here. If representative assemblies would limit themselves to what really concerns such bodies, it would not be so heavy a tax upon people in business to give their time to the public; but they will meddle with things that ought to be let alone, and endless floods of talk on such matters take up much valuable time."

"Then Mr. Hogarth's public spirit has not been gently smothered by a happy marriage and a fine family of children? That is the modern view of the case," said Mr. Dempster. "Nothing great is done by married men, unless they are unhappily mated."

"A most ignoble view of a wife's duties," said Jane.

"My wife would never smother any public spirit I may have," said Francis. "She had too much to do with the birth of it, not to cherish it as fondly as any of her other babies; but I fear that, till my friend Mr. Hare's scheme is carried, I could not get a majority in Victoria. We want the reform very much here, and in all the colonies; and as yet, it has been failure, failure, failure."

"And if such men as you do not get in, Frank, it will never be carried. Grant is stupid—thoroughly stupid. I talked to him for four mortal hours on the subject, and made it plain to the meanest capacity, that though we wanted a representation of minorities, the minority in the House would faithfully represent the minority out of doors, and not be able to defeat the majorities, as he was convinced it would do. I put it down in black and white—proved it with figures. Elsie and I made fancy voting-papers, and I acted as returning officer, and showed the thing as clear as day; but though he drank a bottle and a half of sherry during the process, he was just as wise at the end as at the beginning. Now I don't call myself at all clever, but when Frank explained the method of voting to me, I saw it all in a minute—and you, Tom—did not you, too? but then you are rather a genius."

"It is as plain as a pikestaff," said Tom Lowrie.

"Walter thinks, because he has not read very much, that we must think him stupid," said Elsie, "when he really has the quickest apprehension of all sorts of things."