Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/54

38 character. In one house the living-room was furnished with an excellent library, the owner, a man of some years, having been in charge of an important Library in Edinburgh; coming out to New Zealand, with a family of stalwart sons and daughters, he had taken to the rough life as to the manner born, but, as you may imagine, still retaining his love of letters, and glad to welcome intellectual talk. In another, on the mantelpiece stood a couple of pewter pots, inscribed with names,—our host's being one of them,—mementoes of pair-oared and four-oared races won at Oxford. "Ah, I see you're looking at those! Not quite the same sort of life out here as at Oxford, is it?" In another house, clay built, in a very lonely bit of country, we found, at first, only the mother, a homely, rustic matron, and were asked to stay awhile to baptize her two children; we waited for the husband's return, and whilst the Bishop was conducting the service I was attending to the horses outside. Having a long and intricate journey before us, in a trackless mountain country, we could not afford time to wait for a meal, being, moreover, provided with some necessary food for the way, but the husband, on hospitality bent, thinking no doubt that I should be ready for something, came out of the house, with a bottle of whiskey and some scones in his hand. "The Governor is busy inside still, writing out the register of our children's baptism,—have a bite and sup, you've a long way to go," and then he told me, with honest pride, how well he was getting on,—"was only a farm hand at home, and now cattle and sheep of my own, and my own land and house. Yes, a bit lonely at times, but now and then a traveller, and the wife don't mind it, and then there's the