ncrease. It was a great comfort to me in those early days that
F----, who had been many years in the colony, never joined in the
disheartening prophecies I have alluded to. Although as naturally averse
to reading aloud before strangers as a man who had lived a solitary life
would be sure to be, he promised at once, with a good grace, to read
the Evening Service and a sermon afterwards, and thus smoothed one
difficulty over directly. His advice to me was precisely what I would
fain repeat: "Try, by all means: if you fail you will at least feel you
have made the attempt." May all who try succeed, as we did! I believe
firmly they will, for it is an undertaking on which God's blessing is
sure to rest, and there are no such fertilizing dews as those which fall
from heaven. The mists arising from earth are only miasmic vapours after
all!

But I fear to linger too long on the end, instead of telling you about
the means.

It was May when we were fairly settled in our new home at the head of a
hill-encircled valley. With us that month answers to your November, but
fogs are unknown in that breezy Middle Island, and my first winter in
Canterbury was a beautiful season, heralded in by an exquisite autumn.
How crisp the mornings and evenings were, with ever so light a film
of hoar frost, making a splendid sparkle on every blade of waving
tussock-grass! Then in the middle of the day the delicious warmth of the
sun tempted one to linger all day in the open air, and I never wearied
of gazing at the strange purple shadows cast by a passing cloud; or up,
beyond the floating vapourous wreath, to the heaven of brilliant blue
which smiled upon us. And yet, when I come to think of it, I don't know
that I had much time to spare for glancing at either hills or skies, for
we were just settling ourselves in a new place, and no one knows what
_that_ means unless they have tried it, fifty miles away from the
nearest shop. The yeast alone was a perpetual anxiety to me,--it would
not keep beyond a certain time, and had a tendency to explode its
confining bottles in the middle of the night, so it became necessary to
make it in smaller quantities every ten days or so. If by any chance
I forgot to remind my scatter-brained damsels to replenish the yeast
bottles, they used up the last drop, and then would come smilingly to me
with the remark, "There aint not a drop o' yeast, about, anywhere, mum."
This entailed flap-jacks, or scones, or soda bread, or