flint and steel to boil the kettle and make a cup of tea to give to his
wife in bed. He did it for his first wife (Janet Park), who was
delicate, and he did the same for his second wife until her last fatal
illness. It was a wonderful thing for a man to do in those days. He
would not call the maid; he said young things wanted plenty of sleep.
He had been a navy doctor, and was very intelligent. He trusted much to
Nature and not too much to drugs. On the Sunday of the great annular
eclipse of the sun in 1835, which was my brother John's eleventh
birthday, he had a large double tooth extracted--not by a dentist, and
gas was then unknown or any other anaesthetic, so he did not enjoy the
eclipse as other people did. It took place in the afternoon, and there
was no afternoon church.

In summer we had two services--one in the forenoon and one in the
afternoon. In winter we had two services at one sitting, which was a
thing astonishing to English visitors. The first was generally called a
lecture--a reading with comments, of a passage of Scriture--a dozen
verses or more--and the second a regularly built sermon, with three or
four heads, and some particulars, and a practical summing up.

Prices and cost of living had fallen since my mother had married in
1815, three months after the battle of Waterloo. At that time tea cost
8/0 a lb., loaf sugar, 1/4, and brown sugar 11 1/2d. Bread and meat were
then still at war prices, and calico was no cheaper than linen. and
that was dear. She paid 3/6 a yard for fine calico to make petticoats.
Other garments were of what was called home made linen. White cotton
stockings at 4/9, and thinner at 3/9 each; silk stockings at 11/6. I
know she paid 36/ for a yard of Brussels net to make caps of. It was a
new thing to have net made in the loom. When a woman married she must
wear caps at least in the morning. In 1838 my mother bought a chest of