about the means.

It was May when we were fairly settled in our new home at the head
of a hill-encircled valley. With us that month answers to your
November, but fogs are unknown in that breezy Middle Island, and my
first winter in Canterbury was a beautiful season, heralded in by an
exquisite autumn. How crisp the mornings and evenings were, with
ever so light a film of hoar frost, making a splendid sparkle on
every blade of waving tussock-grass! Then in the middle of the day
the delicious warmth of the sun tempted one to linger all day in the
open air, and I never wearied of gazing at the strange purple
shadows cast by a passing cloud; or up, beyond the floating
vapourous wreath, to the heaven of brilliant blue which smiled upon
us. And yet, when I come to think of it, I don't know that I had
much time to spare for glancing at either hills or skies, for we
were just settling ourselves in a new place, and no one knows what
_that_ means unless they have tried it, fifty miles away from the
nearest shop. The yeast alone was a perpetual anxiety to me,--it
would not keep beyond a certain time, and had a tendency to explode
its confining bottles in the middle of the night, so it became
necessary to make it in smaller quantities every ten days or so. If
by any chance I forgot to remind my scatter-brained damsels to
replenish the yeast bottles, they used up the last drop, and then
would come smilingly to me with the remark, "There aint not a drop
o' yeast, about, anywhere, mum." This entailed flap-jacks, or
scones, or soda bread, or some indigestible compound for at least
three days, as it was of no use attempting to make proper bread
until the yeast had worked. Then the well needed to be deepened, a
kitchen garden had to be made, shelter to be provided for the fowls
and pigs; a shed to be put up for coals; a thousand things which