Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/211

 the news it conveyed. It was like meeting two old friends together.

"I have already sent to Higinbotham (Argus) and will see Franklyn (Herald). No stone shall be unturned, or should be, I ought to say; for I have no doubt the papers will compete for him, not he seek employment from them.

"The only question is which of us is to be his host in the first instance, and Mrs. Aspinall and I are clean against you on that point. His poor wife was at our marriage. We spent our honeymoon with them—we have a right to him. Besides which, if he comes to you he will be branded by his rivals as a Duffyite. Now, thanks to my insignificance, he cannot be called an Aspinallite. So, from my place he starts with no stigma upon him beyond being an Irishman which we may hush up. But I must call and see you to settle this point."

But Whitty was already in the grasp of death. He contributed for two or three weeks to the leading journals, but his health totally failed, and he retired to country quarters, where he died in the house of his kinswoman, Mrs. Whyte, wife of the head-master in the training school of Melbourne. His friends asked me to take charge of the correspondence which was still arriving from Europe, and it furnished a painful revelation of the tragi-comedy of Bohemian life. He lies buried in the Kew cemetery, Victoria, where Barry Sullivan claimed the right of erecting a monument at his sole cost.

Wilson Gray came to consult me on what ought to be done to control the dominant squatters. I reminded him of what we had done in Ireland on behalf of the tenantry with such effect, holding a conference or convention representing the country effectually. He consulted his friends, and after correspondence with notable men throughout the country, a convention on the land question was held in Melbourne. Invitations were sent to the goldfields, to those who had taken part in democratic meetings in recent times, and to the local secretaries of the Duffy Qualification Fund. An assembly of well-informed men, most of them young and vigorous, was got together. They deliberated for several days and adopted a series of principles chiefly under the influence of Wilson