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The Angel Isafrel: A Story of Prohibition in New Zealand

Chapter V. — The Great Convention

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Chapter V.
The Great Convention.

In anticipation of the struggle that was coming, on the Referendum, a great convention of the women of the colony had been summoned, under the auspices of the National Council of Women. It was to be held in Auckland, chiefly in deference to “the Angel Isafrel,” who had been instrumental in bringing it about, as well as in organizing all the organizations throughout the colony, so as to bring the women into line for the greatest battle in which they had ever been called to engage.

Isafrel would take no office herself. She said she was too young, and that it would be unbecoming for her to take a prominent part when so many older and wiser than she were fitted to lead. But she had been the life and soul of the whole movement, and among the women of Auckland, to whom she was best known, and who had sunk all their differences and divisions at her instance, there was nothing that could be done without Miss Chalmers.

In the South she was only known by name and reputation, but there was the deepest interest to see what “the Angel Isafrel” was like, whose plans of campaign had been accepted everywhere on their merits, and the charm of whose name had inspired an enthusiasm that had brushed away every difficulty.

Over two hundred women, holding official positions in connection with the various organizations now affiliated, were coming North as delegates, but besides these many hundreds of women had made their arrangements to come up to attend the convention, which had been specially summoned for the Referendum.

It was fixed that Isafrel was to deliver the inaugural address. She had shrunk with intense unwillingness from the idea at first, but it had been particularly requested from the South that she should; and the women of Auckland, who had so often listened to her words, were anxious to see how the young girl, whose magnetic power and electric sympathy had so readily swayed the emotional and somewhat sentimental women of the North, would fare before the hard-headed, canny Scotswomen from Otago, and the refined and cultured women of Canterbury.

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The great meeting was to be held in the City Hall, and in order to make place for as many women as could get in it was understood that men were not to be admitted. George, however, and one or two others, managed to be specially excepted, as he wanted, as he said, to see the apotheosis of “the Angel Isafrel.”

The place was packed from floor to ceiling, and when the time for the beginning of the proceedings had arrived, and a large number of ladies filed on to the stage and took their places, there was a hush of suppressed interest; and as one graceful willowy girl, clad in white, moved to the front of the stage and quietly took her seat by the side of the table, a subdued murmur passed through the crowded hall—“the Angel Isafrel.” This was followed by a burst of applause and waving of handkerchiefs from every part of the house.

Isafrel sat quietly in her chair, and seemingly confused a little and embarrassed at the display, when after the applause had ceased, the president arose, and in a few words introduced her to the audience. Isafrel arose and stepped to the front of the stage, where she was again treated to a storm of applause and waving handkerchiefs, which continued for several minutes. She had neither notes nor other papers, but a simple rose in her hand, which she was fingering nervously. A black sash and a small black ribbon round her neck, in touching memory of her lost Josephine, were all she wore to relieve the whiteness and purity of her robes; and when, with her wealth of fair hair surmounting a face of exquisite sweetness, the tint a little heightened by the excitement of the occasion, she looked down on that sea of sympathetic faces, there were many, who having never seen the girl before, and expecting a totally different appearance, remarked, “What a lovely girl, and what an appropriate name, the Angel Isafrel.”

“Sisters,” said the speaker, as soon as the applause had stilled, and in a voice so calm and soft that though hardly pitched higher than the tone of ordinary conversation it was heard in every corner of the building, “it is not of my choice that I occupy the honourable portion in which I stand to-night, in opening this great convention. I thought it was better that some of the women of New Zealand who had seen more years, and learned more of experience than I have, should address you, and give the tone and direction to the proceedings which this great assemblage of the womanhood of New Zealand ought to take in the critical circumstances to which we are approaching. But my kind friends, who have uniformly treated me with a consideration far beyond anything that I can pretend to deserve, would have none of it; and when I learned that the women of the South had been pleased to do me the great honour of expressing a desire for me to do this work, I no longer hesitated, and thus it is that I appear on this platform before you to-night.

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“At the same time, let me say that, having obliged myself to do your bidding, and accepted the honour, I am entirely conscious of the greatness of that honour; and not only so, but that having undertaken the duty of addressing you, I feel a genuine pleasure in doing so; and now that I am looking into your kind and evidently sympathetic faces, and feel my heart beating in symphony with yours, I shall try to forget the fewness of my years, and the greatness of my wanting in experience, and I shall try to raise myself to the height of this great argument, and with soul to soul and heart to heart I shall speak to you as a woman of New Zealand to the women of New Zealand.”

When the loud and long applause, which this had drawn, had ceased, the speaker went on:

“Sisters, we occupy a position of honour as women of New Zealand, which few, if any, of our sisters in the world have ever enjoyed before. We were the first women in the British empire to whose hands was entrusted the high privilege of the full electoral franchise; and I cannot think, and I have never thought, that God gave us that exceptional distinction without tacitly covenanting with us that we should show our appreciation of that distinction by resolutely holding the lead, and setting the example to all other women who may be now or subsequently enfranchised of what woman as a great moral force can do in the cause of God and humanity.”

Here again the speaker was interrupted by lengthened applause. She had spoken so far with great quietness, and almost in a monotone, the softened cadences and measured words falling on the ears of the audience amid a stillness that was profound.

“I do not pretend to think,” she went on to say, “that we have not to some extent realised the responsibility that accompanied the great gift, and the great moral force that it was given us to wield. In every part of the colony we have shown our anxiety on this subject, and if our efforts have in some cases been misdirected, and we have not achieved those high results which might have been expected of us, it may reasonably be attributed to our inexperience in the methods of dealing with public responsibilities, and we have been warranted in asking that judgment should not be pronounced on us, and on the outcome of the new departure, until we shall have had time for grasping the position.”

Then she went on to enumerate the various things that had been undertaken or performed by the various women's organizations throughout the colony, and the women from the South and all were surprised at the minuteness of detail with which the speaker was able to unfold every one of the subjects that had engaged their consideration and efforts, even in the organizations of the remotest little country towns. She paid a high tribute to page 45 some of the movements that had been instituted, and to the good that had been done by several of the organizations that had sprung up as the result of the enfranchisement of women.

Then, coming more directly to the great object of the convention, she continued, “But, sisters, we shall allow all this to stand aside for the present, while we come to the great subject of all, which I know to be uppermost in your minds—the principal object of this convention,—and that to which by providential circumstances my own mind has been principally directed.”

And here her whole nature seemed transformed. That slight, lissome, girlish figure appeared to assume an aspect of majesty. Her face beamed with fervour, and there passed through the crowd of assembled women that magnetic thrill that had been so often felt by her audiences in Auckland when Isafrel spoke on the one subject that was nearest to her heart.

“Sisters,” she said, “and women of New Zealand,” and for the first time she raised her hand in an attitude of calling attention, that was intensely impressive, “I need not enter into explanation of the circumstances that first led me to look into the sufferings of those who are the victims of that great scourge, which has appeared to me the cause of all the tragedy of life. They are personal, and perhaps would be of no interest to you. Suffice it to say that my tastes have led me to seek out those whose sufferings have been caused by the liquor traffic of the colony. I do not say that it has been the cause of all suffering, but it has been directly or indirectly the cause of all the sufferings with which I have been in contact. I have seen the little child wasted and wan with hunger, crying in its sufferings for the bread which the father has wasted in the gratification of his own enjoyment. I have seen the mother hang in speechless agony over her dying child, unable to obtain that medicine and nourishment which would bring it back to life and which its father could have provided, but that he was held in thrall by a power against which he was unable to fight. I have seen the wife destitute and lonely, waiting through the still hours of the night for the man who once had found it the sweetest satisfaction of his life to anticipate her wishes, and for whom her smile was as the light of heaven and the elixir of his life—and while she waited she dreaded his return. I have seen the neglected daughter, without sympathy, without guidance, drawn away from the miseries of home; tempted, ruined, and weeping tears of agony and shame over the recollection of a father who had once dandled her on his knee, with the pride and admiration of a brave man, who, as he brushed back her glossy curls and pressed sweet kisses on her brow, would have been ready to lay down his life to shield her from injury or insult. I have seen the mother lying helpless on her bed, with her little prattling infant crawling about neglected on the floor, the children wandering page 46 about uncared for, while the returning from his work, turned away in disgust to find his solace in the companionship of others, who with himself were on the straight way to ruin. I have seen the mother penniless and forsaken, weeping over her only son, who having been honored and prosperous had forfeited friends and place, and honor and trust, and become a byword and a shame, so that even his mother, the last of all to cling to outcast humanity, could not for very shame and anguish mention his name. These are cases that have been repeated a hundred, a thousand times, and there is not one of you but has known of such. I have known of the young man, the bright hope and pride of his party and of his race, eloquent, able, brilliant, popular, beloved by everyone, and destined seemingly to become with years the foremost man of his country; and all these hopes and yearnings dashed down and laid in an early grave. I have known of the father and son, intending the happy innocent celebration of an event in their prosperity, bringing their friends together to rejoice with them, and under the same influence the son offered insult to the father, who, with a fryingpan, felled his own child to the earth—killed by a father's hand. The railway train has rushed over the embankment, plunging innocent trusting men and women into eternity. The ship has been run on the jagged rocks, and its living freight, shrieking and terrorstricken, have been swept into the boiling waves; and innocent victims that had not by their actions contributed to the catastrophe, the friends and relations whose hearts shed tears of blood, perhaps in distant lands, are the sufferers.

“Yes, it is in the complex way in which individual and personal interests are mixed up with those of society that the action of one may affect the other without any other connection than that they are members of the same community. If the man that takes the thing, whether moderately or immoderately, were only himself affected by the results, the matter would be a simple one, and everyone could be left to do as he pleased with himself and his own. But if the presence of it for one's comfort is a menace to the safety of the others, or of society, then the right arises to absolutely shut off that which has caused, and causes, and will cause, so long as it exists, danger and misery and ruin to others, and the safety of the people is the highest law. We surround our shores with a cordon of prohibition against cholera and small-pox. And why? Because if either finds access to one man, others will be in danger; they will have to submit to inconveniences, sanitary precautions, costs and anxieties to guard against the evil, and, becoming epidemic, it will bring death to some. Yet cholera and small-pox combined have never contributed so much to the sum of human misery as this thing which one man claims to have for his own comfort however others may be injured by it.

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“Sisters and woman of New Zealand, it is told you that Jesus Christ and His apostles were on the side of this. I do not try to wrestle with the learned. Texts of Scripture may beread, as statistics are, to prove many things. I leave them to the learned. But my Jesus came, I know, to ‘bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.’ And were there ever somany broken hearts in the history of our race as from this! War, pestilence, and famine, all combined, never broke so many hearts of our fellow countrymen as this. And if Jesus came to bind upbroken hearts He surely cannot wish to preserve and protect the greatest cause of broken hearts. Learned doctors may deduce it from any texts they please; but I cannot, I will not believe that in our circumstances, however it may have been in other circumstances, my Saviour Jesus who came to bind up the brokenhearted can wish to protect and preserve among us this great breaker of human hearts and ruiner of human lives. And if He came to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, where can He find in all the wide realms of Britain any other captives, any other bond slaves, like those who are helpless in the hands of this demon?

“No, sisters! It has been proudly said that slaves cannot breathe in England; let them but touch British soil and their fetters fall to the ground. Sisters! women of New Zealand! be it the proud boast of our native land that the slave of drink cannot breathe New Zealand air, that the moment he touches our strand his fetters fall for ever.”

And now the voice of Isafrel was filled with a singular pathos. There was no more of that awesome majesty that filled her hearers with enthusiasm; she was the simple, shrinking girl again.

“Sisters,” she said, and her voice trembled wth emotion, “I am not to see this. In the visions of the night, when communings are sometimes given with spirit messengers from the far-off land, I have been told that I shall fall in this fight. It may be in the hour of victory; it may be that I shall not be here to listen to the glad tidings of great joy. I do not know from what direction may come the blow; but come it shall. It will fall as a bolt from the blue, but it will come to me from the common enemy. I have been too earnest, perhaps; perhaps I have needlessly evoked revenge. I do not understand it, but I know. I am talking to you, therefore, as by the side of an open grave. Sisters! listen to me. God has put it into your hand to drive this demon from the land. No power can resist you if you will. You have but to say ‘Begone!’ and the evil spirit will be cast out. And, remember this, that in this great crisis of your country, this great struggle for God and humanity, God will require an account at your hands. Do not think you can ide your secret in the ballot box. God will be there. He will page 48 be in the polling booth beside you. You may close the door, close up every chink in the boards or the canvas around you. Cover your hand with paper or with your handkerchief if you will. God will see through that handkerchief or through that paper, and He will require an account at your hands. And if you have voted that the demon stays, and if he is not cast out, every broken heart, every ruined life, every murdered soul that he causes will be at your door. If your own child is struck, and this thing strikes from afar, don't blame God. Don't think that because your own life is happy, because your own home seems safe, because every one you love is free from the slavery of this, that, therefore, you can afford to be indifferent. You do not hold that vote for yourself and yours alone, but for others, too. If they suffer, you have done what you could to ensure that suffering. If in that roundabout, distant way in which this thing travels round and hits from afar, your own child, your sister, your brother, your husband is struck, your hand has done it. God has watched that hand in the polling booth, and how it scratched the paper, and he has required this at your hand. Oh, sisters, hear me as the voice of one standing by her own grave, into which I am about to fall through this thing—I know not how. Hear me for the sake of all that is nearest and dearest to you. By your love of your husband, brother, son; by your love of sister, daughter, child; by your pity for humanity, and your hope of God's mercy, hear me, and drive this demon from the land.”

Isafrel sat down, her hands lay folded on her lap; her eyes, full of tears, were fixed towards heaven, and her lips moved in prayer.

Next morning the report of Isafrel's address to the women of the convention appeared at full length in the morning paper, and it was arranged that several hundreds of thousands of reprints, in the form of a fly sheet, should be struck off for circulation throughout New Zealand.

The address had produced a profound impression, and realised in the minds of the delegates from the South more than the anticipations that had been formed of the young girl who had come into so remarkable prominence in connection with the movement, and whom they called at once the “New Zealand Maid of Orleans.”

Her reference to her expectation of falling in the fight they regarded, of course, as only hallucination caused by the overstrung state of a young girl's nerves, called, as she was, suddenly to undertake onerous and exciting duties sufficient as they thought to break down the strongest. However, from whatever cause, it touched the warmest sympathies of the women, and during the whole course of the convention, which lasted five days, the movements of the girl, flitting about and seeming to guide and vivify the whole proceedings, were watched with the tenderest interest.

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In conjunction with the president and secretary, she, arranged the agenda papers of every day, and it was her tact and watchfulness that ensured the fulfilment of every item. Silent and still in all her movements, she was hardly noticeable among the crowd of women, never appearing prominently, but seemingly always everywhere, and knowing where everything was when it was wanted, and the moment to do everything when it had to be done. There is sometimes jealousy among women when one of their number is singled out for distinction, but there was no jealousy towards Isafrel, her unobstrusive ways, the sweetness of her manner, and the ethereal beauty of “the Angel Isafrel” captivating every heart.

During the several days of the meeting every detail was completed as to the coming campaign. The men workers for the cause throughout the colony had their own organizations in good working order; but the women claiming that this question of the abolition of the liquor traffic was their very own, had been carrying out their share of the campaign on entirely independent lines.

Among the business transacted was the preparation of an address from the convention to the women of New Zealand, and the work was entrusted to Isafrel. It was adopted without even a verbal amendment, and it was deemed wise for the ends in view that it should bear her name. Isafrel was unwilling for this, but it was insisted that her name being now a household word among the women throughout the colony, it would gain for the manifesto an acceptance that nothing else could secure. Isafrel deferred to the will of the meeting, wondering why it was that this great honour had come to her, and what could have drawn the eyes and the hearts of the colony to her in this way.

The address was meant chiefly to combat the indolent and conventional idea held by so many women, that “home only was their sphere,” and that “they had nothing to do with politics. It was shown in the manifesto that this was the politics of home, and that if women whose realm was the home had nothing to do with this, then they must have no interest in life outside their personal individuality. It showed that this traffic invaded every home, and was beyond everything else the destroyer of domestic peace; that it seized on the fathers, brothers, sons of the colony, as soon as ever they stepped out of the sacred circle of home; that it surrounded them all day, when they were devoting themselves to the duty of labouring and striving for their dear ones at home, and that as women could not follow them to the mart, and the counting house, and the workshop, but this traffic could and did, women were traitorous to their loved ones if they did not strike down for ever the great enemy of home.

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It showed that if a woman through indifference or distaste declined to take the trouble to qualify and vote on this occasion, her abstention was directly assisting the enemy, and that she must hold herself accountable to God for the results, whether they came to her own child or relative, or to any woman or child or husband, or brother, or son of the thousands of suffering women of New Zealand who were looking to her, as well as to all her sisters who had votes, to do her duty to herself, her country, and her God. The manifesto concluded with urging that the battle cry of the women of New Zealand should be, “For God and home and humanity,” and it was signed “By order of the National Convention of the Women of New Zealand, Angel Isafrel Chalmers.”

Nearly a million copies of this proclamation were neatly printed on a large fly sheet artistically enclosed in a border of ferns and New Zealand flowers, and the understanding arrived at was that through the various organizations one of these at least should be placed without any exception in every home of the colony sometime during the week preceding Referendum day. As was afterwards made apparent this was faithfully carried out.

Relieved from the cares of the convention, Isafrel, by order of the doctor, and at the urgent solicitations of the women of the Central Committee, gave herself a few days' rest, and George having arranged to get off work for a time, they had some delightful strolls together.

It was at the close of one of these, and on the evening of the last day of this little siesta in their business cares, that they found themselves sauntering together on the strand not very far from Isafrel's home. They had been away around Remuera and Epsom, and had spent several hours and lunched on the heights of Mount Hobson, looking down on the lovely cyclorama of water and woodland, of islands and headlands, and fields and mountains, and those charming peaked volcanic cones clothed in rich 'verdure, that give loveliness unsurpassed to the Auckland landscape.

Long, and tender, and confidential had been the communings of the two engaged lovers, whose love had been sublimated as it were by the fire of the glorious conflict in which they were both so earnestly engaged. The past, which to them seemed all enclosed within the period since that bright summer morning when on the summit of Mount Eden they had told their loves, was all dipped in roseate hues, with but the one dark shadow cast over the latter portion of it by the sorrowful fate of their lost Josephine; and on the slope of Mount Hobson, Isafrel sang again that song which she remembered always as the song of Josephine, “Father, ‘dear father, come home.”

It was associated in their minds with an incident to which Josephine had often referred, one in which that young girl had page 51 taken a deep interest, and in which the items and incidents in the pathetic song had been almost repeated. It was a family to which Josephine had been the ministering angel, in which a mother with a sick child had sent again and again for the father who had been hanging on in a tavern, while his child at home was dying, and Josephine had never sung that song but she thought of the pathetic scene in which she had to a degree been a participator. And every time that Isafrel sang it, and that was often enough, it reminded her not only of that mother and dying child, but also and more touchingly of her dear lost Josephine.

And now again, when they were strolling along the beach, Isafrel was humming the angel chorus:

Hear the sweet voice of the child
Which the night winds repeat as they roam,
Oh, who could resist the most plaintive of prayers?
Please, father, dear father, come home.

“Do you know, dear George,” she said, “that ever since we lost Josephine I never sing those angel words but I think I hear them floating to me from Josephine's own sweet voice in heaven.”

It was a singularly calm and beautiful night. The crescent moon was shedding its soft, silvery light on the lovers as arm in arm they slowly paced the strand of the little cove that lay at the foot of the hill, on the slopes of which Isafrel's home stood. The wavelets rippling on the sands at their feet were the only sounds that broke the stillness, and the distant lamps of the city across the harbour streaming over the water in long tracks of light, converging on themselves from every quarter, seemed the only links of connection between the busy whirl of life and the calmness that reigned in the little sequestered bay. It was a pause in the exciting event that was absorbing the attention of the whole colony; but however wrapped up in themselves, and in their affection for one another, they could not prevent their thoughts from turning to the struggle that was impending, and to the possible and probable fortunes of the fight.

“But do you not think, dear Isafrel,” said George, “that you are rather sanguine as to the part your women will play in this affair? It may seem an ungracious and ungallant thing to say, but I have often thought that women as a rule are narrower in their sympathies than men, and that they are not so capable of being aroused to an effort for the general good. It can hardly be laid to their blame, perhaps, and it comes of the training to which they had been subjected. Women's interests have been so much and so exclusively of their homes and their families, and it seems to me that this has developed a selfishness in women that is not so general in men,—I do not mean a personal selfishness, but a selfishness that is bounded by the limits of their own immediate belongings.”

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“You mean,” said Isafrel, “a selfishness for their families, a want of general sympathy for humanity in general. Well, perhaps, there is something in that. But do you not think again that the giving of the franchise has had a tendency to draw out their sympatheis to a wider range.”

“Yes, in as far as it has affected them at all. But look at the great number of the women of the well-to-do classes, who confess that they take no interest in politics, and who do not appear to have the slightest care for any thing that does not come home to themselves and their families. This surely is selfishness of the narrowest kind, and I am afraid that you will find their indifference a terrible blight to your hopes.”

“I know it, I know it,” said Isafrel; “this is the most heartbreaking discouragement in the whole struggle. The women of the working classes who have learned in the school of suffering are not half so selfish, and, besides, so many of them have felt the sting of this thing themselves; and it is unhappily true that women who are in comfortable circumstances, and have been comfortable all their lives, have often very little pity or even thought for their unhappier sisters; and so long as they do not see the risk of themselves or their families suffering they often care very little for others, and say that ‘woman's sphere is home,’ and they take ‘no interest in politics.’ Women of that class are the worst enemies of women. I cannot bring my mind, however, to think how any woman can be longer indifferent to this thing, which causes so many broken hearts; and yet I believe, as you say, there may be cold-hearted, thoughtless women who will have neglected to register or will be too indolent and indifferent to take the trouble to vote. That any woman, I mean any respectable woman that votes, will not vote against the liquor traffic, I cannot believe; it is so clearly the enemy of home, which is woman's world; but it is the indolent and thoughtless woman who will not take the trouble to vote that I dread.”

“Don't be so sure of that, dear Isafrel,” said George, “I believe that there are women so utterly callous to people's sufferings, provided those sufferings are not those of their own husbands or children, or of themselves, that they could vote for the continuance of anything, even if they knew it would be ruin to others.”

“You must have a low opinion of us, George, or you would not say so.”

“Only some of you, only some. You, of course, dear, see only the good side of them all, because, as I have often enough said, you see your own goodness reflected in everyone you meet, and you think they are all good. They're not all like you, dear Isafrel, are they?”

“I suppose you don't think so, George; but how can a woman tell that this may not strike home to her own? Little page 53 the Websters thought when they voted ‘License’ that it would kill their darling. As poor Mrs. Webster says, ‘it shoots far, and shoots round the corners.’”

“Yes, dear; but I wish you could stop the poor old thing from using that figure of speech. She causes a roar of laughter at every meeting when she crowds it in. She goes about every place now when there is a meeting on the Referendum, and once when she brought up about shooting round the corners, a ribald fellow called out ‘Like Paddy and his gun; he bent the barrel in the middle to shoot round the corner.’ And ever since, when she trots it out, which she is sure to do every time, somebody calls out, ‘like the Irishman's gun,’ and the meeting is spoiled.”

“Poor Mrs. Webster,” said Isafrel; “I do think sometimes that her head is a little touched by her grief, and by the remembrance of the part she thinks she has taken in the death of her poor child; and she seems determined that nobody else she can reach will make the same mistake. Oh! George, but there is a lot of sorrow in life, and sometimes I wish it was all ended; what a dark shadow this thing throws over everything.”

“Yes, dear,” said George, “but it will be soon ended, perhaps, so far as this country is concerned, if this comes right.”

“Yes, I believe it will,” said Isafrel; “but some way I feel that I won't see it; some dark cloud seems to hang over my future.”

“Ah! now, Isafrel, why are you always indulging in these anticipations; of course, I know, dear, you have enough to depress your feelings at home, but that will be all right, too, when this struggle is over.”

Isafrel looked up in George's face with an enquiring glance, “Do you know anything about it, George?”

“Yes, dear, of course I do know all about it, and I often wondered that you had not confidence enough in me to speak about your trouble at home.”

Isafrel was silent for a moment, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. “Oh, George, it was not want of confidence,” she said, “but I felt humiliated so, and I did not like seeming to speak against poor father.”

“But it is not as bad as it was, is it, dear?”

“Oh, yes, George dear, sometimes. Oh! George, I do love my father; and if you knew how he loves me when he is right. But oh, how this thing changes a man. I used to be able to soothe him, but I seem to be losing my influence over him, and sometimes he is so wild when he is that way. I suppose you know he has lost his position, and instead of making him change for the better it seems to have made him worse.”

“My poor, dear Isafrel,” said George, “how I do pity you from my heart. But cheer up, darling, it will be all right shortly.”

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“Yes, I hope so, I believe so, but in some way I know that I shall not see it. There seems a dark cloud before me that my eye cannot pierce.”

“Dear Isafrel, do not talk that way. Why are you always Speaking about clouds and shadows. I know that it is only your nerves that are unstrung by the excitement you have been passing through; but why do you give way like that.”

“Ah, well, George, dear, be it so then. I feel I must make it dull for you sometimes, and I am so sorry, but now we will talk of other things,” and the conversation branched off to the preparations that were being made for the great struggle of the Referendum. The evening had now passed away, and George escorted Isafrel up the hill to the gate of the cottage, and, after an affectionate good-bye, left to catch the boat for town.

On Isafrel entering the house she found everything in confusion and excitement. Her father had come home under the influence of drink, and in a wilder mood than any time before. The children, frightened and crying, ran to her, but thrusting them aside she hastened into the dining room, where her father and mother were. As Isafrel entered the room her mother was rushing towards the door to escape from his violence, and Isafrel hastening forward threw her arms around her father to restrain him. “Off, you wretch,” he cried out, as he flung her violently from him, and staggering back she fell heavily, striking her side on the corner of the couch, and rolled to the floor in a faint.

When he had seen what he had done, the father turned and ran to the help of the prostrate girl. He seemed to be instantly sobered, and bending affectionately over the daughter that he loved so tenderly, he lifted her to the couch, and being joined by his wife, who had not seen this occurrence, but only saw that her child had fainted, he tried everything he could think of to restore her to consciousness.

For long and tenderly the two sorrowing parents rendered their loving sendees, till at last, when hope had almost departed, there were faint signs of returning consciousness. Then her breath came in short, quick sobs, as she pressed her hand on her heart as evidently the seat of her pain. After some time she recognised her parents, and looking lovingly up whispered, “Dear father, dear mother,” and closing her eyes she relapsed into silence. Her mother had left the room to procure some additional help, and to send for medical aid, when, opening her eyes again, Isafrel saw her father beside her. “Oh, father,” she gasped out between her short and hurried breaths, “do not tell how it happened.”

“Oh, my child,” he sobbed, “I have killed you; I have killed you.’

“No, no, dear father; it was not you; it was not you. But promise me, dear father, you will never tell. Promise me. Promise me. Oh, father, promise. Raise up your hand and page 55 swear to me you will never tell anyone on earth. Hasten, oh, father hasten. Raise your hand; swear.”

He raised his hand, and gave the promise exacted by his child.

On her mother entering the room again, not having found anyone to send for a doctor, Isafrel said, “Dear father, you go. I know I am hurt badly,” and she laid her hand on her heart. “Be as quick as you can, dear father.” The shock seemed to have completely restored the man to his sober senses, and he at once started to catch the boat for town.

After some delay in waiting for the boat he reached the other side. The pause in the excitement, and the quiet of the boat, seemed to have brought on a drowsy torpor, and Mr. Chalmers, hurrying up town, was so “shaky” and out of sorts that he felt he should take something to steady his nerves. So he dropped into a publichouse, and called for a glass of brandy. Sitting down for a moment to rest and sip his liquor, he felt so much bettered by it that he thought he would take another, in sipping which he felt such a drowsiness that dropping his head on his arms on the table he fell into a sound sleep.

He was aroused at last after a couple of hours by the barman, and told it was time to go as they had shut up, and everybody else was gone, and so in a dazed and half sleeping state, and forgetting his hat behind him—it was on the floor—he was bundled out into the street.

Steadying himself for a little against the wall, to gather his thoughts, he realised where he was, and hurried up to the residence of the doctor, whom he found to have gone to bed exhausted with a hard day's work.

Seeing a dilapidated-looking old man, without a hat, urging him to go out at that late hour of the night to the north side, the doctor did not at all relish the duty, and told him the last boat must have left, and that if he was to go the man must first find a boat to take him over.

Mr Chalmers hurried down to the wharf as well as his limbs could bear him in the demoralised condition to which they had been reduced, and found that the last steamer had left, and that the watermen were not very kindly disposed to entertaining the proposal of a man in his apparent condition.

“Show us your hoot, old man,” said one of the watermen, and as Mr. Chalmers had not in fact money enough about him to satisfy the terms, the waterman was dubious of the promise of payment tendered, to be fulfilled when the services were performed.

In vain did Mr. Chalmers seek to persuade the waterman, and as the fumes of the brandy evaporated from his brain, and he saw in all its horror the situation he had created, his poor child dying probably from want of timely medical aid, and himself by his misconduct compelled to wander about all night page 56 till the early boat could take him and the doctor over, he often felt inclined to throw himself over the end of the wharf. He would have done so if he had had only himself to think of. But then he realised that his Isafrel was waiting for the help he was to bring, and, shattered and demoralised as he was, he would live for her sake.

So all that long and weary night he paced the wharf in an agony of distress, while his child was waiting sleepless and panting for breath for the help which did not come.

As dawn approached, Mr. Chalmers had found another medical man who was willing to go over, and the first boat leaving for Northcote took him and the doctor, as also Mr. Houston, who had arrived at the last moment by the steamer from Devonport, where he resided; for Isafrel, when she had realised the state she was in, had requested that he should be summoned, and a messenger despatched on horseback during the night around by the way of the head of Shoal Bay, had reached him in time for him to catch the earliest boat.

On their reaching the cottage at Northcote, they found the girl apparently sinking. George hastened to see her, and as he hung over her couch, she looked up tenderly in his eyes and whispered, “It has come, George.”

The medical man made a careful examination with the stethoscope, and stood for some time looking at Isafrel, without making any remark. Then replacing the stethoscope over the heart, he listened for some time, and when he went to the window to prepare some draught or restorative, he was joined by Mr Houston, to whom he said with a look of concern: “I am afraid, sir, there is something very serious there.” The doctor was informed of her having tripped and fallen against the end of the couch, and he reported, “I am afraid there is a serious lesion. I wish I had seen her earlier.”

Isafrel heard so much of the conversation, and when George came over, and leaning over her pressed his lips to hers, and the tears dropped on her cheek, she whispered, “Yes, dear, the shadow has closed in at last.”

The doctor seeing the low state in which she was, brought her some brandy and water, and said he would give her something to revive her. Taking it from the doctor's hand, she asked him what it was, and he told her. She shook her head and offered it back to him.

“No, no,” said the doctor, “take it, my dear; it will do you good; you are very prostrate; it will save your life.”

“Would it save my life, doctor?” she said sweetly, holding the glass in her fingers, her arm resting on the little table drawn to the side of her couch.

“Yes, my dear, take it; it will save your life.”

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“No doctor,” she whispered softly; “I would not give it the honour of saving my life,” and the glass dropped from her fingers and fell in fragments on the floor. “It has ruined my, home it has destroyed my father, and”—she added after a pause, “it has killed me. Doctor,” she said, looking up in his face with great tenderness, “do not be displeased with me; I could not do it the honour of letting it save my life.”

Every service that affection and skill could render for the sick girl was freely tendered, not only by her immediate friends, but by the wide circle of those whose admiration and love she had won, and the most profound regret was everywhere felt for the young girl stricken down by an accident at the very hour of the culmination of the movement of which she was the centre and life. Everyone now remembered the touching statement she had made in her address as to her presentiment that she would not live to see the fruit of her labour; and to thousands, when engaged in the great conflict that supervened, the memory of it seemed to shed a halo of sanctity as well as mystery over the couch of the dying girl in that little cottage at Northcote.