After its appearance in print, on coming across Mr. Were, he smilingly replied, "Well, I read your sketch of the 'Twelve Apostles,' and nothing could be fairer or better done. You will permit me, however, to add, Mr. F——————, that though you are generally supposed to be a very near-sighted individual, I apprehend that when you are on the look-out, it would take a rather sharp-eyed fellow to get at the blind side of you."
The next time I saw Mr. Were was our last meeting in this world, and it was caused by the receipt of the following communication:—
Wellington, 1st May, 1885.
Brighton Beach.
Dear Mr. Finn,—
I have been under the doctor's care for the last six months, suffering from an attack of jaundice, and have become very emaciated with wasting and loss of appetite. I am ordered to Riverina for change of climate, and I leave on Monday morning. If you can see me this evening, or at any time to-morrow, I am gathering some papers which I desire to hand you, and to have the pleasure of a short conversation with you. The terminus is within sight, and a very short distance from my house.
Yours faithfully,
J. B. Were.
Edmund Finn, Esq.,
Parliament House, Melbourne.
After reading the foregoing I handed it to a friend sitting by me, remarking that the "terminus" mentioned therein was intended as a way-mark to point to my intended destination; but a something seemed to foreshadow it as the terminus of the writer's long and not unnotable terrestrial career. It might, had I been conscious of it, have been taken as the indicator of another terminus, then approaching, but unseen, viz., the end of my own official existence, for on the same morning I, for the first time, felt a defect of vision, which so increased during the ensuing two months as to leave me no alternative than to sever my connexion with a branch of Her Majesty's service, in which I had been engaged for nearly thirty years.
In compliance with his desires, I visited Mr. Were that afternoon, and noticed such a striking change in his appearance and manner as to leave but little doubt that if not absolutely in sight, the "terminus" was not far off. He commissioned me to offer, in his name, to the Public Library Museum, a life-size picture of himself, and a quaintly-capped Consular stick, a presentation made to him some years previously. He also deposited in my hands some rare and valuable documents, in print and manuscript, relating to an age now past, and a few of the early Melbourne Directories. Shaking hands with Mr. Were, w e parted with mutual good wishes; but I never saw his face again.
The Hon. Roger Therry was the third Resident Judge at Port Phillip. After a short tenure he returned to Sydney, and remained Judge Therry there for several years. On his retirement, as an agreeable variation for his judicial mind, he amused himself by writing the Chronicles of Early Sydney; but stirred up the foul and stagnant waters of by-gone convictism so much that his book was voluntarily suppressed soon after its publication. This is a rock of which I have purposely steered clear. In Melbourne there was a goodly admixture of the dregs of Cockatoo Island and Port Macquarie absorbed in the primary population, and had I liked I could have done a little in the Therry style. But though at work in the rôle of a "fossicker," I spurned that of a social vidangeur. I would never willingly hurt the feelings of survivors who, by a life of honest toil, purged themselves of the dross of any wrong-doing legally expiated by others. A considerable tract of my wanderings lay as if through a large cemetery, and along this gruesome journey I trod lightly over the graves of departed friends and foes alike. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is an adage which the impartial writer cannot always adopt, and I preferred to substitute De mortuis nil nisi justum. So strictly did I act up to this, that only on three occasions was my verdict challenged, thrice only was I positively contradicted by persons by no means as conversant with the facts disputed as I was, and in each of the instances I amply vindicated my first assertions.
When the chapter on "Remarkable Trials" began its appearance, a small scare was caused in certain self-accusing quarters; and the Editor of the Herald received a letter from one of the alarmists begging of him to discontinue the publication, to "stay the hand of Garryowen," or terrible
