CHAPTER XXII.
Nothing is so ignorant as a man's left hand, except a lady's watch.
-- Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
You notice that Mrs.Praed knows her art.

She can place a thing before you so that you can see it.

She is not alone in that.

Australia is fertile in writers whose books are faithful mirrors of the life of the country and of its history.

The materials were surprisingly rich, both in quality and in mass, and Marcus Clarke, Ralph Boldrewood, Cordon, Kendall, and the others, have built out of them a brilliant and vigorous literature, and one which must endure.