Blanche Edith Baughan

“ Let me say straight out and at once that, with one single exception, where permission has been sought and granted, not one is meant as a photograph. Nearly all, it is true, I have done my best to draw from the life ”

“ So that, to those ever-present clever folk, who, in reading the following pages, may find themselves able to point out portraits here and there, I take this opportunity of humbly suggesting that they should give those good keen eyes of theirs just a little further exercise; and, having made the discovery that any loaf, however badly mixed and baked, does really presuppose some growing grain, should go on to remark that, after all, a paddock of wheat is not really one and the same thing as a bit of brown bread. ”

“ The reason why I want to put into book form efforts so fugitive and meagre is, that, with all their faults, they do yet seem to me honestly to delineate in some degree a phase of New Zealand life that is already passing, and that, so far at least as I have been able to gather, lacks not only an abler chronicler, but any chronicler at all. Young things alter very quickly ”