File:Mutton birds and other birds (1914) (14768565963).jpg

Identifier: muttonbirdsother00guth (find matches)
Title: Mutton birds and other birds
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Guthrie-Smith, H. (Herbert), 1861-1940
Subjects: Birds -- New Zealand
Publisher: Christchurch, N.Z. : Whitcombe and Tombs
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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Text Appearing Before Image:
a homely look,—I say dirty,—but oh how dif-ferent from the tilth of streets. Our dirt wasclean peat perpetually soaked in heavens rain^clean sand bolted a thousand times by gales, andclean leaf mould from virgin woods. On the shelf below the little window, stood,not broken tea-cups wisely kept for show,-but tins of pepper, sugar, tea, coffee, etc.; andfrom projecting nails were hung our mugs andpannikins. From the rafters loaves andbacon were slung in separate flour bags, and,as relics of some by-gone feminine invasion,there yet remained in the whare a brokenpocket mirror, and speared into the wall,a ladys hat pin, u))on which after meals,my companion, full fed, used to gazewith a species of rapture of idolatry. Ofthe tiny oval booking-glass, only a cornerremained, and from this fragment most of thesilvering had been worn away leaving as back-ground the ))rinted merits of a patent medicineexposed. T had never realised the full depravityof my countenance, imtil, with a weeks growth
Text Appearing After Image:
AND OTHER BIRDS in of l^eard, I saw a section of m)^ face in thisremaiiiiiiu, portion of mirror. I never dared tolook again; I seemed to have broken ont intoa loathsome rash of small type, that might havebeen, for all I coukl tell, infections. AssuredlyI never should have been at large at all. I wasa danger to the community, a Ieproach to the)_jerspicuity of the police.* *It was during this expedition that the inner and more esotericmeaning of washing up was revealed to me, tlie pliiiosophy of tlieprocess. We used to do it turn and turn about and often have 1paused to ponder liow dirty plates, mugs, knives and forks becameclean when w-ashed together in a small tin dish. It seemed so impossible that by jnitting soaj) into hot water theleavings of a meal should disappear, that bacon fat, marmalade,cheese, crumbs, yolk of egg, butter, mustard, tea, sugar, and coffeedregs, mixed in the same brew, should give us the finished productof clean plates, clean knives, clean forks and clean mugs.

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