A LINK WITH THE PAST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1507, 17 January 1901, Page 64

A LINK WITH THE PAST.

_«s» lit verv o:si’iv eiiildhood Miss Bredon had been left an orphan- and went out, as soon as she was able for- any 'work, “standards” being no consideration in those good old times, as servant first in one and then in another farmhouse. “From there I went,” she said, "as servant in a gentlefolk’s house, and attev that I was housekeeper to a lady as left me the cnaney and the burry. The "hurrv, ’ or bureau, is a perfeettreasure in black oak, and-the china a constant occasion to me of covetousness. "And all the while.’ she went on. “1 was saving the money to buy the house where I have been ever since and shall be till I’m took. Ic was at L . the farmhouse was. where first I v. ent out r service. Have von ever been to L . “Yes: - ’ I said. I've b.evened over “Oh! do you Vide them wheels?’ she answered, slightlv shocked, I think. . '“Yes.” I said, ‘it's wonaerful how it helns one to get about. ’ “Aye,” she replied, “so it be. ■ It be wonderful bow folks get about nowa-Tn-v so it be. Why. m my young -j“ i m p a d as it was strange to meet one as liad been beyond the next ,; ‘“I supposel said, "that you can remember the time before there were any trains ?’’ •Me remember ? I should hope as I could remember, just as well as you re a-sitting there. It was in tne second place as I was in, out at service, with a farmer’s {family —a very nice tarmei s family they was—people t-nat w oulci keep their carriage nowadays, i ve no CToubt they would, and their planner. “That was out L way where you was saving as you’d been on them wheels. We was sitting around tne table masters and mistresses and servants used to sit round the table in the kitcien to-o-ether in those days to save lighting—we used to make the rushlights (there warn’t no candles in those days) trom the sheep’s fat with a rush run through it when it was melted. mar was five years before King William died, 1 remember well: and master, he came m from market, and he set himself down by the testable, and he says, Tames -— that was to his wife—what do you think as I heard at the market to-day r And Le says, I don’t know, .Master.’ And he says to me, ‘Girl! wnat do vou tlnnk I heard?’ and I says, T don t knoa. And he says, 1 heard as m foreign parts they has carriages as goes without no horses, and af that Missus she pas. put her hands into the air and she says, ‘There! It amt possible, 'Master. And he says, It is possible, for they tells me as it is so in foreign parts, ana, what’s more, may be as you 11 live to tee it yourself, too. here.’ And sue says, ‘I hope as your head’ll never ache before I do see it’; and if you’ll eblieve me, before thirty years there was one of those carriages without horses, what they calls trains now, going past her very door on her own hired lana.” It seemed to take one back a v eiy long wav, into quite a previous state ot aifairs, this scene of the farmer and ms wife and the servant sitting togetner round til© kitchen table bj the lignt o one home-made rush dip. “five years before William the Fourth died/ mat fixed the date very certainly hi the lady s mind. Eight shillings a week, she told me, was the labourer’s wage m those days. “We used to live more plainly then. Lisa (that was her niece), she wouldn’t look at the food as we used to eat then. AVe never had lie meat hardly, unless i was Sundays, or maybe a bit of bacon ; but mostly it was turnips or else potatoes, and bread, But I don’t know as we were any the worse for it. I think it-is good to live plainly. An dwe dressed in homespun, not in them things that is made out of a mill and comes in pieces the third or fourth time of their wearing”—this with immense scorn, for she has no opinion of most modern improvements although holding “ediccation ’ in immense respect “X had one homespun dress as I wore ten years, and then it wasn’t finished bu)t was given away to a beggar woman.” “But, I suppose,’ I said, “you saw the pictureo fa train in the paper before it came to. you” “Papers!” she answered, m scorching scorn of my ignorance, t“here wasn’t no papers in those days. Leastways, the farmer folk never saw no papers.

Lords and ladies, maybe, might have had them. We didn’t see so much as a square inch of paper from year’s end to year's end. and u we did se sc much as a square inch it was treasured up like, and put away like a curiosity.— “Longman’s Magazine.”