In fact, if
I stated that there were no good servants--in the ordinary acceptation
of the word--here at all, I should not be guilty of exaggeration. If
there are, all I can say is, I have neither heard of nor seen them. On
the contrary, I have been overwhelmed by lamentations on that score in
which I can heartily join. Besides the want of means of conveyance (for
there are no cabs, and very few _remises_) and good food and attendance,
any one wanting to entertain would almost need to build a house, so
impossible is it to collect more than half a dozen people inside an
ordinary-sized house here. For my part, my verandah is the comfort of my
life. When more than four or five people at a time chance to come to
afternoon tea, we overflow into the verandah. It runs round three sides
of the four rooms called a house, and is at once my day-nursery, my
lumber-room, my summer-parlor, my place of exercise--everything, in
fact. And it is an incessant occupation to train the creepers and wage
war against the legions of brilliantly-colored grasshoppers which infest
and devour the honeysuckles and roses. Never was there such a place for
insects! They eat up everything in the kitchen-garden, devour every leaf
off my peach and orange trees, scarring and spoiling the fruit as well.
It is no comfort whatever that they are wonderfully beautiful
creatures, striped and ringed with a thousand colors in a thousand
various ways: one has only to see the riddled appearance of every leaf
and flower to harden one's heart.
Pages:
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291