tion about those karaka kernels! “Lady is as lady does”; and old Harete, the unkempt, the unwashed, has remained delightful to my memory ever since as one of the most perfect hostesses I ever met, one considerate before all things of the feelings of her guest. As for a Maori estimate of European gentlehood, did you ever hear this little story, which was repeated to me by the captain? Some up-country settlers were one day speculating as to the social status of a new arrival, who himself had fixed it so high that he could not possibly get down from it to help wash the dinner-dishes. There happened to be a Maori present who solved the problem very simply. “Rangatira (real gentleman)? That fellow? No!” says this true Daniel come to judgment. “Gentleman gentleman never mind what work he do. Piggy gentleman very particular!”
Such were some of the incidents of our homeward trip. But it is with a voyage as it is with a life—you may chronicle every event, and yet leave out the essentials. The characteristic things are less the things that occasionally befall than those that continually are: and, as I look back, the main features and chief charms of that trip were just the common, everyday staples of it—the wholesome, hearty company aboard; the frankness and care-free-ness that come of living always with the open light, and air, and waters; and the inexhaustible riches of the eye. It was a life full of pictures. Day after day one woke to a different landscape (even when we were windbound, the ship’s position altered, of course, with the tide), but never to one unenlivened by a foreground liquid and shining. Day by day,
