A MOTHER IN REPLY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 760, 10 November 1876, Page 3

A MOTHER IN REPLY.

(TO THE EDITOR OF THE DUITSTAU TIMES.) Sir,—ln your issue of the 3rd inst., appears a letter from Alexandra, wherein the writer says, ‘ ‘ [ would take the liberty of ad - vising your correspondent to give up th>s penny-a-lining business and devote himself to some more useful pursuit,” an advice with which I perfectly concur ; but consider it comes with a very bad grace from Mr Finlay, as a letter signed “An Alexandra Boy,” was the joint production of his wife and son, and I presume of himself; but whether either of the writers received a penny-a-line for their letters, or paid a penny-a-line 1 am equally pleased ; but should imagine from the stvle of the letters, the latter the most probable. But what I had reason to bo displeased with was the uncalled-for sneer that a mother spent her time reading when she eonld b« bettor employed at the wash tub, seeing [ have always been able and willing to pay others to perform the uncongenial task for me ; but while admitting the perfect truth of the statement, however horrible such an admission must appear, that I prefer

reading to washing. Ho should remember that even were I so inclined, the mere accident of living iii New Zealand cannot accomj plish an instantaneous hardening of the musolqs necessary for so laborious a task { that man'is fl creature of circumstance ; that he pomes slowly to perfection; has taken a long time to evolve from his original ancestor the ape ; that it take? at lea*t „threo, generations to make a gentleman, and a good number more to make a good washerwoman; and rest satisfied that his own lines have fallen in pleasant places, as the mother of his children is not 1 only an-excellent laundress, but has descended from an unbroken line of that very useful if net illustrious class of people ; while I have the misfortune to descend from an illustrious but now useless race of Scottish princesses, whose heaviest task was to perpetuate the heroic deeds of their husbands in fine tapestry, little dreamng that in the future Scotland of the then unknown antipodes their descendent would become a martyr, not because she was the only woman whs did not wash her household linen, but because she was the only one who could not in the whole district A Mother. Alexandra, Nov. 6th.