Explore "Thirty Years in Australia" by Ada Cambridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Towards the end of May 1886 -- against professional advice, to which we opposed our private opinion that the best way to get well was to get rid of the homesick cravings that were beyond doctor's reach -- I was transferred from my hospital bed to one in the house of a dear Melbourne friend, where I lay in all the luxury that love and money could provide, and with portions of family around me, for a few more weeks; until at last it was considered that I might make the long journey to my home in safety. I had a bed in the railway carriage, and reached the goal of my desires at midnight, when the long-motherless bairns were asleep. Thereafter, although weighed down at times with the thought of my supposed impending doom -- never really out of my mind, and constantly spurring me to extreme efforts to turn the available time to the best account, in the interests of my prospective orphans -- I persisted in getting well and in enjoying myself accordingly.
Indeed, the charm of life at this period -- only to be understood by those in like case, who have been so near to losing it -- is a bloom upon the retrospect that is likely to misrepresent it in these pages. Beauty is in the eye and heart of the beholder more than in the thing beheld. However, I can only paint as I have seen, and the reader will make allowances.