Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/327

 Hon. Sir E. T. Smith ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 301 seeming paradox that the worry and harassing care of public Hfc afford pleasure to some who feel a real stagnation when they retire from the midst of the turmoil. Perhaps it is so with Sir Edwin ; for in 1888 and the following year he again yielded to a general wish that he should accept the Mayoralty of Adelaide. It must be remembered that these official duties were contemporaneous with those entailed on him by a seat in the Assembly. Both city and suburbs are much indebted to Sir Edwin Smith for the facility of communication which now e.xists between them. The network of tramways which stretches on every side had its commencement in his active promotion of the Adelaide and Suburban Tramway Company, the first to undertake the laying down of lines to North Adelaide and Kensington. The advantages of the scheme were obvious to all, but it was he who first made it practically possible, brushing aside all difficulties with characteristic resolution, and piloting through Parliament the necessary legislation. He was fur some years a director of the Company, but has latterly left the work of management to others. The bed of the Torrens River as it runs through the city was for many years an ugly sight, and a thing of general offence. Remedies were suggested, but nothing practical was done until Sir Edwin and his colleagues in the City Council succeeded, after considerable discussion of various schemes, in carrying out a measure for its beautification. From an unsightly and unhealthy quagmire it was transformed into an attractive and useful sheet of water, and the lake then formed remains to this day one of the chief attractions of Adelaide. This transformation will long be remembered in connection with Sir Edwins name, for his advocacy and energy were the principal factors in the carrying out of the scheme. The Adelaide Jubilee International E.xhibition of 1887 is still fresh in the memory of the Province ; so, too, are perhaps the great difficulties experienced in connection with the preliminary arrangements. It was in the midst of general doubt and uncertainty — at a point when the Government had actually abandoned the original scheme — that Sir E^dwin stepped into the breach and obtained a dubious consent to a fresh start, on a basis of individual guarantees. His energy and influence soon obtained the requisite support, and the undertaking prospered from that moment. He became, inevitably, the practical head of the central committee of organisation, and infused into it his own spirit of activity. Sir PLdwin's enthusiasm and earnest desire to see not only an Exhibition, but a successful Exhibition, induced him to contribute much time and labor for the furtherance of the undertaking, and it was but fitting that, as chief promoter and vice-president, he received a knighthood as a reward. There was no doubt a certain fitness in the presentation to the city of Adelaide of the fine statue which forms the central adornment of King William Street by the man wh(j had some years before been instrumental, as Mayor, in causing the opening up of Victoria Square, and so converting that street into one of the finest thoroughfares in the Southern Hemisphere. The lifelike presentment in bronze of Her Majesty the Queen was selected by Sir Edwin while on a visit to England in 1893, from the studio of Mr. Birch, A.R.A. It was cast at the Thames Ditton Foundry, under the supervision of the sculptor himself; and though several replicas of the work exist in various parts of