Village books

Then comes
the question: Who will be man's successor? To which the answer is:
We are ourselves creating our own successors. Man will become to
the machine what the horse and the dog are to man; the conclusion
being that machines are, or are becoming, animate. In 1863 Butler's
family published in his name A First Year in Canterbury Settlement,
which, as the preface states, was compiled from his letters home,
his journal and extracts from two papers contributed to the Eagle.
These two papers had appeared in the Eagle as three articles
entitled "Our Emigrant" and signed "Cellarius." The proof sheets of
the book went out to New Zealand for correction and were sent back
in the Colombo, which was as unfortunate as the Burmah, for she was
wrecked. The proofs, however, were fished up, though so nearly
washed out as to be almost undecipherable. Butler would have been
just as well pleased if they had remained at the bottom of the
Indian Ocean, for he never liked the book and always spoke of it as
being full of youthful priggishness; but I think he was a little
hard upon it.


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