A good house will have the outside walls boarded up and down, with battens covering the chinks, instead of weather-boarding like our shanty. The inside walls and ceilings will be lined with grooved and jointed planking, so as to make the house what is styled bug-proof. There is a broad verandah round the whole or part of the house. There are brick chimneys inside the house, though, as they are usually an item of considerable expense, this is not invariable, and chimney out-puts like ours will be seen not infrequently. There are various rooms, and possibly an upper storey, which may or may not have a balcony above the verandah. It is a common practice to have French windows, opening upon the verandah, instead of doors.
Such houses can be made very elegant as well as comfortable. They are painted and decorated with carvings outside, and the inside walls may be painted, papered, or varnished. Furniture and upholstery of all kinds is, of course, procurable in Auckland; so that one can have all the comfort of an English home, if one is able to pay for it.
Necessarily, the cost of house-building will vary considerably, according to the style and size of residence. A cottage with two to four rooms will cost £100, or less. The average price paid for houses in our district--large roomy houses for prosperous family-men, contracted for with a carpenter, to build, paint, and thoroughly finish off--runs from £250 to £500, or something like it. Kauri timber is used almost exclusively in the North, so that we may say we live under the shadow of the Kauri pine.
We keep up the usages of society so far as to pay visits occasionally, especially to houses where there are ladies. You have got to live in a country where petticoats are few and far between, where there is not one woman to twenty or thirty men, as is the case here, in order to thoroughly appreciate the delights of feminine society. People at home don't know how to treat a lady; they are too much used to them. Why, there are actually more women than men in England!
We treasure our ladies, because they are so rare among us in the bush. Good creatures they are, these settler's wives. How kind and benevolent they are to us, to be sure! And how they do delight to "boss" us about! But we like it, we enjoy it, we revel in it. We would lay ourselves down for them to trample on us, and be truly grateful for the attention. That is our loyal feeling towards the married ladies resident in the district. Conceive, if you can, how much more extravagant is our gallantry when certain other persons are in question--young ladies whom the irreverent covertly term "husband-hunters!"