Hobart Town, Tasmania
When Mrs. Carr, experienced for the first time the cruelty of this truth, she was unprepared for it. In later years, having learned her lesson, having been convinced that opposition to truth is inherent to human nature, she was able to hold her courage with a fixed and steel-willed conviction, that cut its way through all walks of opposition. But at first she was not prepared for this unlovely trait of lesser minds. Accordingly, we sometimes find her sinking, wavering, fluttering like a bird in a snare, before the breath of treachery, and the opposition of jealous natures.
To understand the story of this life in its entirety, one must know the details of these struggles and these disappointments. Yet we would rather leave the story incomplete, than perpetuate misunderstandings and misrepresentations. Those who opposed Mrs. Carr in all of her educational plans, share the fate of one who chooses as his part in life, that of opposition. It is not he who opposes, but he who performs, to whom the world owes its gratitude. Those who are antagonistic to good works, court the oblivion that awaits them. Those who, in spite of discouragements and hostility, hold tenaciously to lofty purposes, leave to the world such monuments of their devotion, as the sun-kissed college on the flower-embossed hill overlooking Sherman, Texas.
We shall content ourselves, therefore, with passing by, in silence, the words and deeds of the ill-natured, the unfriendly and the indifferent. One should not go back into the past to gather its thorns. So much is said at this place, that those conversant with the controversies and contentions of school and church life during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, need not expect to find them reanimated in this volume.
The following selection from Mrs. Carr's diary deals with her first trip to North Tasmania whither, two years later, she and her husband were to go for a year's sojourn:
"Jan. 3. Left for Hobart Town, Tasmania, on the ship Southern Cross. Sisters at the wharf. Kissed Ollie goodby. Dashed away the tears—may we meet again, dear husband!
"4th. Passed through Port Philip's Bay. Over the Rip, that terrible Rip! what seasickness it brings! Terrible storm! I was crowded out of my birth, but was glad to get the fresh air. The captain and stewardess were kind. The Lord bless them.
"5th. Reached Hobart Town, 7 a. m. Met by the Walworths, to whom Ollie had telegraphed. Saw more vice in two hours than I saw in New York in two weeks. What wicked people!
"6th. Sailed in the Monarch to New Norfolk, 22 miles. Scenery along the Derwent is grand, but not to be compared to that of the beautiful Ohio. Hop gardens far up the hills, shrouded in mists. How lovely!
"7th. Visited Salmon Ponds, 7 miles from New Norfolk. Salmons raised here, as they are not native to Australia; 30,000 sent to the ocean yearly through the streams that supply the ponds from the Derwent. Returned to North Tasmania by coach; fine view of the country—how I wished for Ollie!