Esmond, but for whose discovery Lalor might never have been here, has failed to get leave to earn State wages enough to keep the wolf from the door.
The fingers of change move swiftly. Whilst facts and figures have been shaping for the printers of this edition, the funerals of some of those who furnished the matter have passed by. Since the last chapter has been in type, the old mess-room of the civil and military officers of the Camp has been sold, and its materials have been removed piece-meal. Thirty years ago, the present Premier of Victoria stood in his blue serge shirt on the verandah of the house, and unsuccessfully tried to persuade his brother blue-shirts to return him, at that time, to the court then sitting there. "Rebel" bullets fell about the house during the ante-Stockade trouble, and then the vanquished victors of the Stockade sent representatives to sit in the mess-room as a Local Court, with Warden Sherard as first chairman, and thereafter, as long as the court lived, with the merry, brown-eyed Daly, and with the merrier and caustic Miskelly as the clerk for awhile. Ex-Chairman Sherard is still here, as Savings Bank actuary, but Daly and many others, who sat there a generation agone, are dead. The old historic house itself is now gone, too, and a free public library is to be built upon the site.
For myself, I now vanish for ever from this stage, to write editions of this History no more—if this be history. But though I now retire behind the scenes, so far as this work is concerned, I shall not forget the play nor the leading players. The largest portion of my life has been spent here, and if there be any possibility of the realisation of such a sad conceit as that of the Tudor Mary, who said Calais would be found written upon her heart, the name of this beautiful city of Ballarat may be found written upon mine.
W. B. W.
- Ballarat, 3rd August, 1887.
