Station Life in New Zealand
Preface. These letters, their writer is aware, justly incur the reproach of egotism and triviality; at the same time she did not see how this was to be avoided, without lessening their value as the exact account of a lady's experience of the brighter and less practical side of colonization. They are published as no guide or handbook for "the intending emigrant;" that person has already a literature to himself, and will scarcely find here so much as a single statistic. They simply record the expeditions, adventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of the wife of a New Zealand sheep-farmer; and, as each was written while the novelty and excitement of the scenes it describes were fresh upon her, they may succeed in giving here in England an adequate impression of the delight and freedom of an existence so far removed from our own highly-wrought civilization: not failing in this, the writer will gladly bear the burden of any critical rebuke the letters deserve. One thing she hopes will plainly appear,--that, however hard it was to part, by the width of the whole earth, from dear friends and spots scarcely less dear, yet she soon found in that new country new friends and a new home; costing her in their turn almost as many
inquired so often while interviewing foreigners for his paper that now
he cannot abandon his old phrase. Mr. Brenton has been with us but a
short time," continued Ferris, "and so you know, Speed, you can hardly
expect him to answer your inevitable question."
"What part of the country are you from?" asked Speed.
"Cincinnati," answered Brenton, feeling almost as if he were an American
tourist doing the continent of Europe.
"Cincinnati, eh? Well, I congratulate you. I do not know any place in
America that I would sooner die in, as they call it, than Cincinnati.
You see, I am a Chicago man myself."
Brenton did not like the jocular familiarity of the newspaper man, and
found himself rather astonished to learn that in the spirit-world there
were likes and dislikes, just as on earth.
"Chicago is a very enterprising city," he said, in a non-committal way.
"Chicago, my dear sir," said Speed, earnestly, "is _the_ city. You will
see that Chicago is going to be the great city of the world before you
are a hundred years older. By the way, Ferris," said the Chicago man,
suddenly recollecting something, "I have got Sommers over here with me."
"Ah!" said Ferris; "doing him any good?"
Preface. These letters, their writer is aware, justly incur the reproach of egotism and triviality; at the same time she did not see how this was to be avoided, without lessening their value as the exact account of a lady's experience of the brighter and less practical side of colonization. They are published as no guide or handbook for "the intending emigrant;" that person has already a literature to himself, and will scarcely find here so much as a single statistic. They simply record the expeditions, adventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of the wife of a New Zealand sheep-farmer; and, as each was written while the novelty and excitement of the scenes it describes were fresh upon her, they may succeed in giving here in England an adequate impression of the delight and freedom of an existence so far removed from our own highly-wrought civilization: not failing in this, the writer will gladly bear the burden of any critical rebuke the letters deserve. One thing she hopes will plainly appear,--that, however hard it was to part, by the width of the whole earth, from dear friends and spots scarcely less dear, yet she soon found in that new country new friends and a new home; costing her in their turn almost as many