Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/43

 beggar of London was a type of the English peasant. The day after our arrival being Sunday, my husband returned to the ship, according to promise, to read prayers to the emigrants, of whom the greater part were still on board. The captain sent his own boat for him, under command of the second mate, who was eager to tell of an accident which had befallen one of our fellow-passengers, a Roman Catholic priest who had been on shore, like ourselves, and had been anxious to return to the vessel early on the Sunday morning to look after some of the Irish emigrants of his faith. A good deal of sea was running when two "green hands," as the mate called them, undertook to bring him off from the shore, and they very nearly succeeded in drowning him alongside the ship by capsizing the boat, which they were unable to manage properly. Meanwhile I went to the colonial church of Fremantle, where, as I was not supposed to know that the choir was led by a ticket-of-leave holder, everything seemed homelike. The prayer for the Governor, however, used in place of that for the High Court of Parliament, recalled to me my absence from England; as did also, on the conclusion of the prayers, an appeal from the clergyman to his congregation on behalf of their fellow-colonists at Champion Bay, whose standing crops had been destroyed by fire.

After my husband's return from the ship we spent the evening at the Parsonage, a very pretty and comfortable-looking house, and as our host and hostess were unable to give us beds, made our way about ten o'clock to the 'Emerald Isle Hotel,' where we had engaged rooms the day before, and where our landlady took all possible pains to make us feel at home. On Monday we went back once