It was on the twenty-ninth day of March, in that year of 1914 that
dawned in peace and happiness and set in blood and death and bitter
sorrow, that we landed in Sydney. Soon I went to work. Everywhere my
audiences showed me that that great and wonderful reception that had
been given to me on the day we landed had been only an earnest of
what was to come. They greeted me everywhere with cheers and tears,
and everywhere we made new friends, and sometimes found old ones of
whom we had not heard for years.

And I was thinking all the time, now, of my boy. He was on his way.
He was on the Pacific. He was coming to me, across the ocean, and I
could smile as I thought of how this thing and that would strike
him, and of the smile that would light up his face now and the look
of joy that would come into his eyes at the sudden sighting of some
beautiful spot. Oh, aye--those were happy days When each one brought
my boy nearer to me.

One day, I mind, the newspapers were full of the tale of a crime ill
an odd spot in Europe that none of us had ever heard of before. You
mind the place? Serajevo! Aye--we all mind it now! But then we read,
and wondered how that outlandish name might be pronounced. A
foreigner was murdered--what if he was a prince, the Archduke of
Austria? Need we lash ourselves about him?

And so we read, and were sorry, a little, for the puir lady who sat
beside the Archduke and was killed with him. And then we forgot it.
All Australia did. There was no more in the newspapers. And my son
John was coming--coming. Each day he was so many hundred miles nearer
to me. And at last he came. We were in Melbourne then, it was near to