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
prisoners alive--_en vie_; fat ones; _en masse_."
That night Hirondelle was sent out with four of his fellow Hurons to
get, if possible, a prisoner. Pretty soon he was separated from the
others; all but himself returning empty-handed in a couple of hours. No
Germans seemed to be abroad. But Hirondelle did not return.
"He risks too far," grumbled his captain. "He has been captured at last.
I always knew they would get him, one night."
But that was not the night. At one o'clock there was suddenly a sound of
lamentation in the front trench of the French on that sector. The
soldiers who were sleeping crawled out of their holes in the sides of
the trench walls, and crowded around the zigzag, narrow way and rubbed
their eyes and listened to the laughter of officers and soldiers on
duty. There was Hirondelle, solemn as a church, yet with a dancing light
in his eyes. There, around him, crowded as sheep to a shepherd, twenty
figures in German uniform stood with hands up and wet tears running down
pasty cheeks. And they were fat, it was noticeable that all of them were
bulging of figure beyond even the German average. They wailed "Kamerad!
Gut Kamerad!" in a chorus that was sickening to the plucky poilu
make-up. Hirondelle, interrogated of many, kept his lips shut till the
first excitement quieted. Then: "I report to my colonel," he stated, and
finally he and his twenty were led back to the winding trench and the
colonel was waked to receive them. This was what had happened:
Hirondelle had wandered about, mostly on his stomach, through the
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