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
Sam!"
Lizzie, hot-cheeked, heard the laughter, and went on up-stairs.
Nathaniel was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hat on, his poor
coat buttoned to his chin; he was holding his precious bag, gripped in
two nervous hands, on his knee. When he heard her step, he drew a deep
breath.
"Oh, kind woman!" he said; "I'd begun to fear you were not coming."
"I am--a little late," Lizzie said. "I--I was detained."
"It does not matter," he said, cheerfully; "I have had much food for
thought while awaiting you. I have been thinking that this wonderful
invention will be really your gift to humanity, not mine. Had I gone
to the Farm, it would never have been. Now--!" His voice broke for joy.
"Oh, well, I don't know 'bout that," Lizzie said, nervously; "I guess
you could 'a' done it anywheres."
"No, no; it would have been impossible. And think, Lizzie Graham, what
it will mean to the sorrowful world! See," he explained, solemnly; "we
poor creatures have not been able to conceive that of which we have
had no experience; the unborn child cannot know the meaning of life.
If the babe in the womb questioned, What is birth? what is living?
could even its own mother tell it? Nay! So we, questioning: 'God, what
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