Station Amusements in New Zealand by Lady Mary Anne Barker (best large ereader .txt) 📕

he triumphantly cleared the water; knocking Mr. U---- over, and scattering his three drivers like summer leaves on the track. As for Alice and me, the inside passengers, we found the sensation of jumping a creek in a dray most unpleasant. All the croquet balls leapt wildly up into the air to fall like a wooden hailstorm around us. The mallets and hoops bruised us from our head to our feet; and the contents of my basket were utterly ruined. Not only had my tea-cups and saucers come together in one grand smash, but the kettle broke the bottle of cream, which in its turn absorbed all the sugar. Jack looked coolly round at us with an air of mild satisfaction, as if he thought he had done something very clever, whilst our shrieks were rending the air.

What a merry, light-hearted time of one's life was that! We all had to work hard, and our amusements were so simple and Arcadian that I often wonder if they really did amuse us so much as we thought they did at the moment. Let all New Zealanders who doubt this, look into those perhaps closed chapters of their lives, and as memory turns over the leaves one by one, and pictures like the sketches I try to reproduce in pen and ink, grow into distinctness out of the dim past, it will indeed "surprise me very much," if they do not say, as I do,--my pleasant task ended,--"Ah, those were happy days indeed!"
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Publication Date: 08-03-2010

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