Then these slippers were all more or less of an easy fit, and had a way of flying out on the lawn suddenly, startling my dear dog Nettle out of his first sleep.
Ah, well! that may be an absurd bit of one's life to look back upon, but its days were bright and innocent enough.

Health was so perfect that the mere sensation of being alive became happiness, and all the noise of the eager, bustling, pushing world, seemed shut away by those steep hills which folded our quiet valley in their green arms.

People have often said to me since, "Surely you would not like to have lived there for ever ?" Perhaps not.

I can only say that three years of that calm, idyllic life, held no weary hour for me, and I am quite sure that quiet time was a great blessing to me in many ways.

First of all, in health, for a person must be in a very bad way indeed for New Zealand air not to do them a world of good; next, in teaching me, amid a great deal of fun and laughter, sundry useful accomplishments, not easily learned in our luxurious civilization; and, lastly, those few years of seclusion from the turmoil of life brought leisure to think out one's own thoughts, and to sift them from other peoples' ideas.