Roughing It in the Bush Part 27

"'As long as she enjoyed her health,' she said, 'they were welcome to bury her in effigy as often as they pleased; she was really glad to be able to afford amus.e.m.e.nt to so many people.'

"Night after night, during the whole of that winter, the same party beset her house with their diabolical music; but she only laughed at them.

"The leader of the mob was a young lawyer from these parts, a sad, mischievous fellow; the widow became aware of this, and she invited him one evening to take tea with a small party at her house. He accepted the invitation, was charmed with her hearty and hospitable welcome, and soon found himself quite at home; but only think how ashamed he must have felt, when the same 'larum commenced, at the usual hour, in front of the lady's house!

"'Oh,' said Mrs. R---, smiling to her husband, 'here come our friends. Really, Mr. K---, they amuse us so much of an evening that I should feel quite dull without them.'

"From that hour the charivari ceased, and the old lady was left to enjoy the society of her young husband in quiet.

"I a.s.sure you, Mrs. M---, that the charivari often deters old people from making disgraceful marriages, so that it is not wholly without its use."

A few days after the charivari affair, Mrs. D--- stepped in to see me. She was an American; a very respectable old lady, who resided in a handsome frame-house on the main road. I was at dinner, the servant-girl, in the meanwhile, nursing my child at a distance.

Mrs. D--- sat looking at me very seriously until I concluded my meal, her dinner having been accomplished several hours before.

When I had finished, the girl give me the child, and then removed the dinner-service into an outer room.

"You don't eat with your helps," said my visitor. "Is not that something like pride?"

"It is custom," said I; "we were not used to do so at home, and I think that keeping a separate table is more comfortable for both parties."

"Are you not both of the same flesh and blood? The rich and the poor meet together, and the Lord is the maker of them all."

"True. Your quotation is just, and I a.s.sent to it with all my heart.

There is no difference in the flesh and blood; but education makes a difference in the mind and manners, and, till these can a.s.similate, it is better to keep them apart."

"Ah! you are not a good Christian, Mrs. Moodie. The Lord thought more of the poor than he did of the rich, and he obtained more followers from among them. Now, WE always take our meals with our people."

Presently after, while talking over the affairs of our households, I happened to say that the cow we had bought of Mollineux had turned out extremely well, and gave a great deal of milk.

"That man lived with us several years," she said; "he was an excellent servant, and D--- paid him his wages in land. The farm he now occupies formed a part of our U.E. grant. But, for all his good conduct, I never could abide him, for being a BLACK."

"Indeed! Is he not the same flesh and blood as the rest?"

The colour rose into Mrs. D---'s sallow face, and she answered with much warmth--

"What! do you mean to compare ME with a n.i.g.g.e.r!"

"Not exactly. But, after all, the colour makes the only difference between him and uneducated men of the same cla.s.s."

"Mrs. Moodie!" she exclaimed, holding up her hands in pious horror; "they are the children of the devil! G.o.d never condescended to make a n.i.g.g.e.r."

"Such an idea is an impeachment of the power and majesty of the Almighty. How can you believe such an ignorant fable?"

"Well, then," said my monitress, in high dudgeon, "if the devil did not make them, they are descended from Cain."

"But all Cain's posterity perished in the flood."

My visitor was puzzled.

"The African race, it is generally believed, are the descendants of Ham, and to many of their tribes the curse p.r.o.nounced against him seems to cling. To be the servant of servants is bad enough, without our making their condition worse by our cruel persecutions. Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost; and in proof of this inestimable promise, he did not reject the Ethiopian eunuch who was baptised by Philip, and who was, doubtless, as black as the rest of his people. Do you not admit Mollineux to your table with your other helps?"

"Mercy sake! do you think that I would sit down at the same table with a n.i.g.g.e.r? My helps would leave the house if I dared to put such an affront upon them. Sit down with a dirty black, indeed!"

"Do you think, Mrs. D---, that there will be any negroes in heaven?"

"Certainly not, or I, for one, would never wish to go there;" and out of the house she sallied in high disdain.

Yet this was the woman who had given me such a plausible lecture on pride. Alas, for our fallen nature! Which is more subversive of peace and Christian fellowship--ignorance of our own characters, or the characters of others?

Our departure for the woods became now a frequent theme of conversation. My husband had just returned from an exploring expedition to the backwoods, and was delighted with the prospect of removing thither. The only thing I listened to in their praise, with any degree of interest, was a lively song, which he had written during his brief sojourn at Douro:--

TO THE WOODS!--TO THE WOODS!

To the woods!--to the woods!--The sun shines bright, The smoke rises high in the clear frosty air; Our axes are sharp, and our hearts are light, Let us toil while we can and drive away care.

Though homely our food, we are merry and strong, And labour is wealth, which no man can deny; At eve we will chase the dull hours with a song, And at grey peep of dawn let this be our cry,

To the woods!--to the woods!--&c.

Hark! how the trees crack in the keen morning blast, And see how the rapids are cover'd with steam; Thaw your axes, my lads, the sun rises fast, And gilds the pine tops with his bright golden beam.

To the woods!--to the woods!--&c.

Come, chop away, lads! the wild woods resound, Let your quick-falling strokes in due harmony ring; See, the lofty tree shivers--it falls to the ground!

Now with voices united together we'll sing-- To the woods!--to the woods!--The sun shines bright, The smoke rises high in the clear frosty air; Our axes are sharp, and our hearts are light, Let us toil while we can and drive away care, And drive away care.

J.W.D.M.

CHAPTER XII

THE VILLAGE HOTEL

Well, stranger, here you are all safe and sound; You're now on sh.o.r.e. Methinks you look aghast,-- As if you'd made some slight mistake, and found A land you liked not. Think not of the past; Your leading-strings are cut; the mystic chain That bound you to your fair and smiling sh.o.r.e Is sever'd now, indeed. 'Tis now in vain To sigh for joys that can return no more.

Emigration, however necessary as the obvious means of providing for the increasing population of early-settled and over-peopled countries, is indeed a very serious matter to the individual emigrant and his family. He is thrown adrift, as it were, on a troubled ocean, the winds and currents of which are unknown to him.

His past experience, and his judgment founded on experience, will be useless to him in this new sphere of action. In an old country, where generation after generation inhabits the same spot, the mental dispositions and prejudices of our ancestors become in a manner hereditary, and descend to their children with their possessions.

In a new colony, on the contrary, the habits and a.s.sociations of the emigrant having been broken up for ever, he is suddenly thrown on his own internal resources, and compelled to act and decide at once; not unfrequently under pain of misery or starvation. He is surrounded with dangers, often without the ordinary means which common-sense and prudence suggest of avoiding them,--because the EXPERIENCE on which these common qualities are founded is wanting.

Separated for ever from those warm-hearted friends, who in his native country would advise or a.s.sist him in his first efforts, and surrounded by people who have an interest in misleading and imposing upon him, every-day experience shows that no amount of natural sagacity or prudence, founded on experience in other countries, will be an effectual safeguard against deception and erroneous conclusions.

It is a fact worthy of observation, that among emigrants possessing the qualities of industry and perseverance so essential to success in all countries, those who possess the smallest share of original talent and imagination, and the least of a speculative turn of mind, are usually the most successful. They follow the beaten track and prosper. However humbling this reflection may be to human vanity, it should operate as a salutary check on presumption and hasty conclusions. After a residence of sixteen years in Canada, during which my young and helpless family have been exposed to many privations, while we toiled incessantly and continued to hope even against hope, these reflections naturally occur to our minds, not only as the common-sense view of the subject, but as the fruit of long and daily-bought experience.

After all this long probation in the backwoods of Canada, I find myself brought back in circ.u.mstances nearly to the point from whence I started, and am compelled to admit that had I only followed my own una.s.sisted judgment, when I arrived with my wife and child in Canada, and quietly settled down on the cleared farm I had purchased, in a well-settled neighbourhood, and with the aid of the means I then possessed, I should now in all probability have been in easy if not in affluent circ.u.mstances.

Native Canadians, like Yankees, will make money where people from the old country would almost starve. Their intimate knowledge of the country, and of the circ.u.mstances of the inhabitants, enables them to turn their money to great advantage; and I must add, that few people from the old country, however avaricious, can bring themselves to stoop to the unscrupulous means of acquiring property which are too commonly resorted to in this country. These reflections are a rather serious commencement of a sketch which was intended to be of a more lively description; one of my chief objects in writing this chapter being to afford a connecting link between my wife's sketches, and to account for some circ.u.mstances connected with our situation, which otherwise would be unintelligible to the reader. Before emigrating to Canada, I had been settled as a bachelor in South Africa for about twelve years. I use the word settled, for want of a better term--for a bachelor can never, properly, be said to be settled. He has no object in life--no aim.