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[Page 16]

solution by us, by a beneficient Providence who knows that in constant occupation man finds his happiness. An industrious people are a happy people. They want not theatres, pictures shows, hotels, and aught else that goes on in order to fill up the vacancies in the human brain that for the main result from not having grasped the essentials of life. There may not be, & is not, harm in amusement, but God never intended it to be as the be all & end all of existance.

18-12-14 Upon this waste of glassy blue water our good ship ploughs its way at the rate of about twelve knots per hour, that being the exact speed during the last 24 hours – 288 miles. Not fast for these modern days, but far in excess of what was common in times not long since of the world's age. North of the tropic of Capricorn my mind oft reverts to the accounts my dear Mother – R.I.P. – many a time & oft poured into my youthful ears of the way in which sailing ships lay becalmed on the bosom of the Atlantic Ocean in like lattitudes, where for week after week with sails all set 'twas but a roll from side to side, the will while the Captain and his merry men paced the deck whistling for the wind that did not come, the weather was called "the doldrums", word which phonetically suggests a doleful state of affairs. Few now living appreciate the comfortable conditions under which we live as compared with those that belonged to your grandfathers and grandmothers. Even M. M. Bertrand, M. M. Pins, and their companions if there be any now living could give you accounts of a sailing ship on its long voyage from Ireland to Australia. My earliest years were imbued with the history of how your grandparents Nash sailed from

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