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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

Hobart, Tasmania, Sunday, 10th July, 1904

Hobart, Tasmania,

It was a great pleasure to get letters from Leeds here last Friday, though the latest date was June 3rd, more than a month ago. Whit-Monday will seem a long way off by the time you read this, but I had been anxious about the weather you had for the Sunday School Treat, and it was a real relief to learn that there had been no rain. You must not imagine that it is all warmth and sunshine here. Though we are in the latitude of Madrid, and have but just come down from that of Palermo, we are in midwinter, and since we left Adelaide, have had but a few days really fine. For the most part it has been chilly and damp like an English October, and often worse. But that is nothing to complain of, we are everywhere most kindly received and hospitably housed, and make many friends to whom we have too soon to bid farewell. This is our only real grievance—the weekly parting from those who have quickly endeared themselves to us, and whom we can never hope to meet again on earth.

page 19

We reached Launceston from Melbourne on the morning of the 29th, passing on the way the P. and O. boat 'Australia, which a week before the pilot had steered direct on to the rocks. In the afternoon we had a reception, at which the Mayor took the chair, and leading citizens including Clergy of the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregational Churches were present and gave a most hearty welcome. The same evening I gave a lecture on "The Principles and Beliefs of Unitarians," the Mayor again taking the chair, and five Ministers attending. I lectured again the two following nights to good audiences, and conducted service twice on Sunday. There were neither hymns nor piano, and I looked forward to an experience so novel with considerable apprehension; but all went well, if I may so say when all was of my own doing. We had as many in the morning as it was reasonable to expect, and in the evening the room was quite full. I was much interested to meet there a grandson of Dr. Hutton, who, seventy years ago, was our Minister at Mill Hill. He had come from Deloraine, thirty miles away, to meet me. Another reminder of Mill Hill was the finding here descendants of the Rev. George Walker, who held the pulpit before Dr. Priestley.

We came on here on my birthday, July the fourth, and were received by Mr. Justice Clark and his family with as much kindness as if we had been old friends of the family. But this has now become so common an experience with us that we are in some danger of taking it as a matter of course. Everybody we meet page 20 is friendly, though the correspondence columns of the papers show that there are some we don't meet who are by no means friendly. Occasionally I am favoured with anonymous letters which express pity for me, or refer me to a selection of texts, of which the writers seem to imagine I have never heard. The only unkind thing was the expression of a hope that "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ would visit you in your declining years," a reminder which I hardly needed that I am getting to be an old man—it is unfortunately true, but I think this Australian tour will do something to rejuvenate me.

Here I have given three week-evening lectures, and gave another on "What Unitarians believe" this afternoon, and conducted service, at which there must have been two hundred people present, in the evening. They have had services on Sunday evenings conducted by laymen for the last seven years, and consequently Unitarianism is somewhat better known than at Launceston or Perth, yet I have nowhere had better congregations than at Perth. To-morrow I am to give a final lecture on the Gospels, and on Wednesday we leave for Sydney.

You must not suppose from this list of engagements that I am overworked. Indeed, I have much less real work than I am accustomed to in Leeds, where the mere Sunday duties are enough to tax my full powers, as they ought to do. But I am even more fully occupied, for there are all kinds of social amenities, which fill up the days very agreeably, but leave me very little time, for writing. Hence it comes about page 21 that I have to finish this letter between eleven and twelve at night, in time for to-morrow's mail, for I cannot bear to think that you should be any longer without news of me.

This will reach you in the holiday month. I hope you will all have more summer-like weather than we had the last two years.

C. H.