Although as naturally averse to reading aloud before strangers as a man who had lived a solitary life would be sure to be, he promised at once, with a good grace, to read the Evening Service and a sermon afterwards, and thus smoothed one difficulty over directly.

His advice to me was precisely what I would fain repeat: "Try, by all means: if you fail you will at least feel you have made the attempt." May all who try succeed, as we did! I believe firmly they will, for it is an undertaking on which God's blessing is sure to rest, and there are no such fertilizing dews as those which fall from heaven.

The mists arising from earth are only miasmic vapours after all! But I fear to linger too long on the end, instead of telling you about the means.
It was May when we were fairly settled in our new home at the head of a hill-encircled valley.

With us that month answers to your November, but fogs are unknown in that breezy Middle Island, and my first winter in Canterbury was a beautiful season, heralded in by an exquisite autumn.
How crisp the mornings and evenings were, with ever so light a film of hoar frost, making a splendid sparkle on every blade of waving tussock-grass! Then in the middle of the day the delicious warmth of the sun tempted one to linger all day in the open air, and I never wearied of gazing at the strange purple shadows cast by a passing cloud; or up, beyond the floating vapourous wreath, to the heaven of brilliant blue which smiled upon us.

And yet, when I come to think of it, I don't know that I had much time to spare for glancing at either hills or skies, for we were just settling ourselves in a new place, and no one knows what _that_ means unless they have tried it, fifty miles away from the nearest shop.