double tooth extracted--not by a dentist, and
gas was then unknown or any other anaesthetic, so he did not enjoy the
eclipse as other people did. It took place in the afternoon, and there
was no afternoon church.

In summer we had two services--one in the forenoon and one in the
afternoon. In winter we had two services at one sitting, which was a
thing astonishing to English visitors. The first was generally called a
lecture--a reading with comments, of a passage of Scripture--a dozen
verses or more--and the second a regularly built sermon, with three or
four heads, and some particulars, and a practical summing up.

Prices and cost of living had fallen since my mother had married in
1815, three months after the battle of Waterloo. At that time tea cost
8/0 a lb., loaf sugar, 1/4, and brown sugar 11 1/2d. Bread and meat
were then still at war prices, and calico was no cheaper than linen,
and that was dear. She paid 3/6 a yard for fine calico to make
petticoats. Other garments were of what was called home made linen.
White cotton stockings at 4/9, and thinner at 3/9 each; silk stockings
at 11/6. I know she paid 36/ for a yard of Brussels net to make caps
of. It was a new thing to have net made in the loom. When a woman
married she must wear caps at least in the morning. In 1838 my mother
bought a chest of tea (84 lb.) for 20 pounds, a trifle under 5/0 a lb.;
the retail price was 6/0--it was a great saving; and up to the time of
our departure brown sugar cost 7 1/2d., and loaf sugar 10d. It is no
wonder that these things were accounted luxuries. When a decent Scotch
couple in South Australia went out to a station in the country in the
forties and received their stores, the wife sat down at her
quarter-chest of tea and gazed at her bag of sugar, and fairly wept to
think of her old mother across the ocean, who had such difficulty in
buying an ounce of tea and a pound of sugar. My mother even saw an old
woman buy 1/4oz. of tea and pay 11/2d. for it, and another woman buy
1/4lb. of meat.

We kept three maids. The cook got 8 pounds a year, the housemaid 7
pounds, and the nursemaid 6 pounds, paid half-yearly, but the summer
half-year was much better paid than the winter, because there was the
outwork in the fields, weeding and hoeing turnips and potatoes, and
haymaking. The winter work in the house was heavier on account of the
fires and the grate cleaning, but the wages were less. My mother gave
the top wages in the district