[PREFACE]
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PREFACE.
The following "Reminiscences" of the life of Mr Robert Campbell, St. Clair, Dunedin, N. Z., as written down by a very intimate friend, partly from diaries and partly from his own dictation, were not originally intended to be printed; but the writer thinks there is much in the little book which, to Mr Campbell's friends at anyrate, will be of very great interest. The short sketch entitled "Colonial Life in the Early Days" is very instructive, as showing the privations and hardships endured and difficulties overcome by the hardy pioneers of the settlement: when men, instead of growling about "hard times," bent circumstances to their wills rather than allow circumstances to bend their wills. People nowadays (young people especially) are more willing to spend than to earn and save money, and lives conducted on that principle are sure to end in material failure. Mr Campbell (and others like him), did not know and did not care about "eight hours a-day" and "half-holiday" movements, and showed their grit and sense by toiling manfully and living frugally when young, so that in old age they might attain to what Burns rightly describes as
... "The glorious privilege
O' bein' independent."
L. B. M.
Dunedin, Sept., 1894.
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