ity, of
which the mother country, I am told, knows nothing. He had imported
pheasants' eggs, and salmon-spawn, and young deer, and black-cock
and grouse, and those beautiful little Alderney cows no bigger than
good-sized dogs, which, when milked, give nothing but cream. All
these things throve with him uncommonly, so that it may be declared
of him that his lines had fallen in pleasant places. But he had
no son; and therefore in discussing with him, as I did daily, the
question of the Fixed Period, I promised him that it should be my lot
to deposit him in the sacred college when the day of his withdrawal
should have come. He had been married before we left New Zealand, and
was childless when he made for himself and his wife his homestead at
Little Christchurch. But there, after a few years, a daughter was
born to him, and I ought to have remembered, when I promised to him
that last act of friendship, that it might become the duty of that
child's husband to do for him with filial reverence the loving work
which I had undertaken to perform.

Many and most interesting were the conversations held between
Crasweller and myself on the great subject which filled our hearts.
He undoubtedly was sympathetic, and took delight in expatiating on
all those benefits that would come to the world from the race of
mankind which knew nothing of the debility of old age. He saw the
beauty of the theory as well as did I myself, and would speak often
of the weakness of that pretended tenderness which would fear to
commence a new operation in regard to the feelings of the men and
women of the old world. "Can any man love another better than I do
you?" I would say to him with energy; "and yet would I scruple for a
moment to deposit you in the college when the day had come? I should
lead you in with that perfect reverence which it is impossible
that the young should feel for the old when they become feeble and
incapable." I doubt now whether he relished these allusions to his
own seclusion. He would run away from his own individual case, and
generalise widely about some future time. And when the time for
voting came, he certainly did vote for seventy-five. But I took no
offence at his vote. Gabriel Crasweller was almost my dearest friend,
and as his girl grew up it was a matter of regret to me that my only
son was not quite old enough to be her husband.

Eva Crasweller was, I think, the most perfect piece I ever beheld of
youthful feminine bea