the deliberate advice of the author to his countrymen and women--advice
in which he believes there is nothing unscriptural or repugnant to common
sense.

* * * * *

Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives--can
make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of
business in Eastern Anglia--of my step-daughter--for such she is, though
I generally call her daughter, and with good reason, seeing that she has
always shown herself a daughter to me--that she has all kinds of good
qualities, and several accomplishments, knowing something of conchology,
more of botany, drawing capitally in the Dutch style, and playing
remarkably well on the guitar--not the trumpery German thing
so-called--but the real Spanish guitar.

* * * * *

In the summer of the year 1854 myself, wife, and daughter determined upon
going into Wales, to pass a few months there. We are country people of a
corner of East Anglia, and, at the time of which I am speaking, had been
residing so long on our own little estate, that we had become tired of
the objects around us, and conceived that we should be all the better for
changing the scene for a short period. We were undetermined for some
time with respect to where we should go. I proposed Wales from the
first, but my wife and daughter, who have always had rather a hankering
after what is fashionable, said they thought it would be more advisable
to go to Harrowgate, or Leamington. On my observing that those were
terrible places for expense, they replied that, though the price of corn
had of late been shamefully low, we had a spare hundred pounds or two in