lived such a retired, stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were—hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning and find himself in Port Nelson in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him.
I shall not soon forget the peculiar feeling with which I raised my blind and looked out upon the unknown world—a wide, white wilderness was all that met my gaze, a waste of—
"Deserts tossed in snow,
And heavy-laden groves."
I descended to the school-room with no remarkable eagerness to join my pupils, though not without some feeling of curiosity respecting what a further acquaintance would reveal. One thing, among others of more obvious importance, I determined with myself; I must begin with calling them Miss and Master. It seemed to me, a chilling and unnatural piece of punctilio between the children of a family and their instructor and daily companion, especially where the former were in their early childhood, as at Wellwood House; but even
