ad those letters now they would be curious records of
the early days of the Colony, but all now recollected is the account of a
little kangaroo jumping into a hunter's open shirt, thinking it was his
mother's pouch.

The Reform Bill, after all, when passed made no present difference in
Otterbourne life--nothing like the difference that a measure a few years
after effected, namely, the Poor-law Amendment Bill. Not many people
here remember the days of the old Poor-law, when whatever a pauper family
wanted was supplied from the rates, and thus an idle man often lived more
at his ease on other people's money than an industrious man on his own
earnings. It was held that if wages were small they might be helped out
of the rates, and thus the ratepayers were often ruined. In the midst of
the street stood the old Poorhouse. It had no governor nor anyone to see
that order was kept or work done there, and everybody that was homeless,
or lazy, or disreputable, drifted in there. They went in and out as they
pleased, and had a weekly allowance of money. Now and then there was a
great row among them. One room was inhabited by an old man named Strong,
who was considered a wonder because he ate adders cut up like eels and
stewed with a bit of bacon. Every now and then a message would come in
that old Strong had got a couple of nice adders and wanted a bit of bacon
to cook with them. Then there was a large family whose father never
worked for any one long together, and lived in the Workhouse, with a wife
and six or seven children, supported by the parish. These people were
pursuaded to go to Manchester, where there was sure to be work in the
factories for all their many girls. The men in receipt of parish pay
were supposed to have work found for them on the roads, but there was not
much of this to employ them, and as they were paid all the same whether
they worked or not, some were said to hammer the stones as if they were
afraid of hurting them, or to make the wheeling a couple of barrows of
chalk their whole day's work.

A good deal depended on the vestry management of each parish, and there
was less of flagrant idleness supported by the rates here than at many
places. There was also a well-built and arranged Workhouse at Hursley,
and the Poor law Commissioners consented to make one small Union of
Hursley, Otterbourne, Farley, and Baddesley, instead of throwing them
into a large one.

The discontinuance of out-door reli