A HOLIDAY IN CORNWALL.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, 3 December 1887, Page 3

A HOLIDAY IN CORNWALL.

[By Ellsk.]

T)kar MrEmtok. — We have just got backto town, after a most delightful summer holiday. My husband and myself determined that this year we would do something quite original, so instead of seeking a. fashionable seaside resort or "trapezing"otrtoS\vitzerland we betook ourselves to a quiet little ii -slung- village in the south of Cornwall. Mevagissey, as this old-world retreat i^> called, lies well out of the ordina'y tourist route, being ten miles from a railway station and boasting no conspicuous attractions in the sightseeing line. The inhabitantplivcentirely on theproceedsof their fishing and are a singularly primith c people, honest, temperate and God-fearing. They greeted us hospitably, and treated us during our a isit most kindly, but without an atom of the cringing respect so often paid by the masses to the classes. The women at Mevagisoey "rule the roost " completely. The men pay the money they cam into " the missus's " hands directly they recehe it and are grateful if she allows them a six-pence to buy "a bit of baccy " with. Most of the young fellows are strict teetotallers, and their clder3 seem to consider a nob of cider quite a small dissipation. I was told that no self-respecting girl would dream of speaking to a lad, much less of " keeping company " with him unless he was a teetotaller. In someother respects, strange to say, the young folks are decidedly lax. Illegitimate children abound and appear to be taken quite as a matter of course. A buxom dame was pointed to me who left her husband and 5 children one fine morning', and "took up" with a young man named (let us say) Jones, living opposite to them. The injured husband, no doubt you think, half-mur-deied Jones. Not at all. He accepted the situation philosophically, merely observing that 'twas un neighbourly of Jones not to have relieved him of "the kids" as well as "the missus/ The deserted children, in point of fact, soon became the plague of their father's life. They wouldn't go to school and he couldn't keep them clean. At length one afternoon about a year after the elopement the in juried man came to a determination and proceeded to Jones's. His " late mis&us " was in alone nursing the infant which she had recently borne her lover. "Mary, come home," quoth the husband, without circumlocution, "our kids be running wild and I can't keep 'em clean, I can't,' 1 Mary ruminated for a moment. In all probability she was tired of Jones and yearned after her children. Bnb then there was the baby. She pointed to it significantly, and queried "What of this?" "Say no more," responded her spouse, eageily. "We'll not make a fuss about a trifle like that." (This is positive fact.) The re-united pair forthwith quitted Jones's roof, leaving that worthy to reflect on the instability of feminine aifection. The extraordinary features of the transaction are that all parties concerned arc strict Methodists and regular churchgoers : that the principals concerned never exchanged an angry woi-d, though living opposite one another, and that their neighbours seem to have thought little if any the worse of the wife for her escapade. Ift occurred four years ago, and she has ever since lived in connubial happiness v> ith her husband.