Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/36

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FRESH-WATER BAY.
33

hunter had been successful, and had a sack of eggs hanging before him. He pays two guineas a year to the lord of the manor for the privilege of getting them, and sells them, he says, "to people in a decline." One lady, he told us, had paid him a shilling apiece. "She," replied Captain H., with a lurking smile, "must have been far gone in a decline, I think." The man told us they had the art of emptying the eggshell by perforating it with two pinholes, and blowing out the contents; whereupon the captain, who leaves nothing unessayed, amid his children's merry shouts and ours, fairly rivalled the professes at his own art.




Sunday.—We have been to church for the first time in England. It was an old Gothic edifice. I thought of our forefathers with tenderness and with reverence. Brave men they were to leave these venerable sanctuaries, to go over the ocean—to "the depth of the desert's gloom."

It was a curious coincidence enough, that the first preacher we hear this side the water bears our own name. This it was, no doubt, that set my mind to running upon relationships and forefathers. Mr. S. is a poor curate, who, after twenty years' service, is compelled to leave his place here by the new order of things, which obliges his superior to do his own