Presently a little Kaffir maid comes in with a small wooden tub such as in other lands are used about dairies, the tub often having ears to hold it by, and it is filled with hot water; beside it she brings in a piece of white, home-made soap, and a little cotton cloth. She kneels down before the feet of her master or mistress to take off their shoes, but is directed to go to the visitors first. If you decline she then proceeds round the room from chair to chair, washing the feet of each member of the family. When this is finished, the daughter announces that supper is ready, and, if there be a small back room to the house, all retire there; if not, they gather round the central table, where are spread some plates and knives and a few steel forks, and on which there is a large dish of hunks of mutton boiled in water, or more occasionally, fried in fat, and another dish with thick slices of bread; or, if meal be scarce or unobtainable, a dish of boiled mealies, crushed or uncrushed. Each one of the adults helps himself from the great dish, while the children are served, and the meal proceeds more or less in silence, and the elder daughter, who seldom sits down till the meal is half over, pours out cups or basins of coffee, and stands them at each one's elbow. The meal is concluded expeditiously in ten or fifteen minutes and then the whole family rise. It is now half-past eight or nine; the sleepy children troop off to their beds; and after sitting a few moments in the great front room, the farmer looking out once over the half-door to see what the weather is like, and having a final smoke, you are asked whether you do not wish to retire also, and the host, taking a tallow candle in a flat candle-stick, leads you into one of the small side rooms, and hopes you will sleep well. This room is generally a mud-floored apartment about one-fourth the size of the front room. In one corner stands a bed, made often like the sofa and tables of the front room, of home-turned wood, its lathes being formed of interlaced thongs of ox-hide, and sometimes consisting of a veritable "kartel" taken from the ox-wagon, and placed on four rough posts. On the bed is a wool or feather mattress and two quilts formed of blankets covered with carefully made patchwork, or chintz, and in the corner there may be a large wagon-chest, but generally the room contains nothing else, unless it is to be shared by some members of the family, who will occupy a second bed. The long wandering wagon journeys have destroyed the sensitive objection to the sharing of a common sleeping apartment by persons of different ages and sexes. In the wagon or tent, where each one, from the aged grandmother to the infant and growing-up youth, lay of necessity closely side by side for shelter and warmth, the habit of disrobing at night was also lost. As they did in the old ox-wagon, so still to-day on every primitive, unmodernized up-country farm, adults and children simply take off their shoes, and