Idylls of Youth
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. As Short as I Wish Had Been the Majority of Sermons to Which I Have Been Forced to Give Ear
CHAPTER NINETEEN. The Ninth of November 1896
CHAPTER TWENTY. Same Yarn—Continued
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. My Unladylike Behavior Again
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. Sweet Seventeen
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. Ah, For One Hour of Burning Love, ’Tis Worth an Age of Cold Respect!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. Thou Knowest Not What a Day May Bring Forth
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. Because?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. Boast Not Thyself of Tomorrow
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. My Journey
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. To Life
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. To Life—Continued
CHAPTER THIRTY. Where Ignorance Is Bliss, ’Tis Folly to Be Wise
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. Mr. M’Swat and I Have a Bust-up
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO. Ta-Ta to Barney’s Gap
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE. Back at Possum Gully
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR. But Absent Friends Are Soon Forgot
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE. The Third of December 1898
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX. Once Upon a Time, When the Days Were Long and Hot
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN. He That Despiseth Little Things, Shall Fall Little by Little
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT. A Tale That Is Told and a Day That Is Done
A few months before I left Australia I got a letter from the bush signed “Miles Franklin,” saying that the writer had written a novel, but knew nothing of editors and publishers, and asking me to read and advise. Something about the letter, which was written in a strong original hand, attracted me, so I sent for the MS, and one dull afternoon I started to read it. I hadn’t read three pages when I saw what you will no doubt see at once—that the story had been written by a girl. And as I went on I saw that the work was Australian—born of the bush. I don’t know about the girlishly emotional parts of the book—I leave that to girl readers to judge; but the descriptions of bush life and scenery came startlingly, painfully real to me, and I know that, as far as they are concerned, the book is true to Australia—the truest I ever read. I wrote to Miles Franklin, and she confessed that she was a girl. I saw her before leaving Sydney. She is just a little bush girl, barely twenty-one yet, and has scarcely ever been out of the bush in her life.
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