trouble to drive her in to be milked, or even to tie up her calf so that she might not stray; and so all the children, two or three of whom were down with the measles, drank their bad tea, which is the staple beverage at all meals, and was especially needed here to disguise the abominable dirtiness of the water, without a drop of milk to it. Why are not children taught a little about kitchen economy and cooking at school? In the bush reading and writing are elegant and refined accomplishments, useful in their way, but mere ornamental accessories to a complete education compared with the knowledge how to make a loaf of bread and cook a bit of mutton. De Tocqueville remarked on the depression and melancholy expressed on the countenance of the American backwoodsman and the harassed, prematurely aged look of the wife. Something of this is to be seen in the settler in the bush. You seldom see a smile or hear a laugh. It is not that there is any need to work harder than is good for health. Still less is there anything approaching to want. But the great loneliness is very trying to most minds. I have been told by a shepherd’s wife that she did not see anyone but her husband much oftener than once in three months, and he was generally away all day, and often all night. Possibly she may have exaggerated a little. But this was within four miles of a township and a main road. What must it be in remote districts, where stations are sometimes twenty miles and more apart? Shepherding is the most lonely occupation of any, and it is said that a large proportion of the inmates of colonial lunatic asylums have been shepherds. If you ask anyone not born in the colony if he or she would like to go home again, not one in twenty but will wistfully and unhesitatingly answer ‘Yes;’ though not one in twenty but is richer and has greater means of living in comfort now than before leaving home. Not but what it would be a mistake to make too much of this preference for the old home. Happy memories live while sad ones perish, and those whom you ask are old now, probably, and were young when they were at home, and what they really mean (though they don’t exactly know it) is that they liked being young better than they like being old.