FEBRUARY 16.

I was much amused the other day at receiving a letter of introduction from a mutual friend in England, warmly recommending a newly-arrived bride and bridegroom to my acquaintance, and especially begging me to take pains to introduce the new-comers into the “best society.”  To appreciate the joke thoroughly you must understand that there is no society here at all—­absolutely none.  We are not proud, we Maritzburgians, nor are we inhospitable, nor exclusive, nor unsociable.  Not a bit.  We are as anxious as any community can be to have society or sociable gatherings, or whatever you like to call the way people manage to meet together; but circumstances are altogether too strong for us, and we all in turn are forced to abandon the attempt in despair.  First of all, the weather is against us.  It is maddeningly uncertain, and the best-arranged entertainment cannot be considered a success if the guests have to struggle through rain and tempest and streets ankle-deep in water and pitchy darkness to assist at it.  People are hardly likely to make themselves pleasant at a party when their return home through storm and darkness is on their minds all the time:  at least, I know I cannot do so.  But the weather is only one of the lets and hinderances to society in Natal.  We are all exceedingly poor, and necessary food is very dear:  luxuries are enormously expensive, but they are generally not to be had at all, so one is not tempted by them.  Servants, particularly cooks, are few and far between, and I doubt if even any one calling himself a cook could send up what would be considered a fairly good dish elsewhere.  Kafirs can be taught to do one or two things pretty well, but even then they could not be trusted to do them for a party.  In fact, if I stated that there were no good servants—­in the ordinary acceptation of the word—­here at all, I should not be guilty of exaggeration.  If there are, all I can say is, I have neither heard of nor seen them.  On the contrary, I have been overwhelmed by lamentations on that score in which I can heartily join.  Besides the want of means of conveyance (for there are no cabs, and very few remises) and good food and attendance, any one wanting to entertain would almost need to build a house, so impossible is it to collect more than half a dozen people inside an ordinary-sized house here.  For my part, my verandah is the comfort of my life.  When more than four or five people at a time chance to come to afternoon tea, we overflow into the verandah.  It runs round three sides of the four rooms called a house, and is at once my day-nursery, my lumber-room, my summer-parlor, my place of exercise—­everything, in fact.  And it is an incessant occupation to train the creepers and wage war against the legions of brilliantly-colored grasshoppers which infest and devour the honeysuckles and roses.  Never was there such a place for insects!