Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/81

Rh a fair white lined cloth. It is the altar. Near it a small table with Bible and prayerbook; chairs and rough benches, well filled; neither choir nor instrument; a shortened service, hymns, sermon; then a certain number of communicants, whilst many remain throughout the celebration. They have come riding or driving long distances, and do not readily forego their monthly chance of meeting together. I think you would soon forget the rude, primitive condition of the place, and regard it no more than the first Christians did, in the upper rooms or in the rugged gloom of the Catacombs.

Service over, there are many greetings and much talk, for these monthly gatherings are important functions where people live so far apart, and if the talk does run on the price of wool, or the returns of the lambing, or the merits of young colts, and perhaps the contents of the last papers from Home, by mail, which takes three months, what would you have, even if it is Sunday, in a country where your nearest neighbour is twenty miles distant? Then comes dinner, provided in part by the owner of the station, and in part by supplies brought by settlers who happen to have such luxuries as pigs and poultry, and, save the parson, it is late afternoon ere the company disperses. But he has a long ride before him for an afternoon, and then for an evening service.

In the evening I usually expect only the residents of the station, with an occasional stranger who is travelling and finds the usual hospitality common to all in a new country. On one of these occasions I was in the house of an old Waterloo officer, a Scotchman, who had entered the army as an ensign, and was naturally full of reminiscences of that day. After