A Home-Fed Pig, One Of Eleven Slaughtered On One Fell Day, Produced The Excellent Ham; The Squash And Potatoes Were From The Garden; And The Bread And Beer Were From Home- Grown Wheat And Hops.

After dinner Mr. Forrest and I used to take lengthy rides, along wild roads, on horses of extraordinary capabilities, and in the evening we used to have bagatelle and reading aloud.

Such was life in the clearings. On one or two evenings some very agreeable neighbours came in; and in addition to bagatelle we had puzzles, conundrums, and conjuring tricks. One of these "neighbours" was a young married lady, the prettiest person I had seen in America. She was a French Canadian, and added to the graces of person and manner for which they are famed a cleverness and sprightliness peculiarly her own. I was very much pleased with the friendly, agreeable society of the neighbourhood. There are a great many gentlemen residing there, with fixed incomes, who have adopted Canada as their home because of the comforts which they can enjoy in an untaxed country, and one in which it is not necessary to keep up appearances. For instance, a gentleman does not lose caste by grooming his own horse, or driving his own produce to market in a lumber-waggon; and a lady is not less a lady, though she may wear a dress and bonnet of a fashion three years old.

I was surprised one morning by the phenomenon of some morning-callers - yes, morning-callers in a Canadian clearing. I sighed to think that such a pest and accompaniment of civilisation should have crossed the Atlantic. The "callers" of that morning, the Haldimands, amused me very much. They give themselves great airs - Canada with them is a "wretched hole;" the society is composed of "boors." In a few minutes they had asked me who I was - where I came from - what I was doing there - how I got to know my friends - and if I had come to live with them. Mr. Haldimands, finding I came from England, asked me if I knew a certain beautiful young lady, and recounted his flirtations with her. Dukes, earls, and viscounts flowed from his nimble tongue - "When I was hunting with Lord this," or "When I was waltzing with Lady that." His regrets were after the Opera and Almack's, and his height of felicity seemed to be driving a four-in-hand drag. After expatiating to me in the most vociferous manner on the delights of titled society, he turned to Mrs. Forrest and said, "After the society in which we used to move, you may imagine how distasteful all this is to us" - barely a civil speech, I thought. This eccentric individual was taking a lady, whom he considered a person of consequence, for a drive in a carriage, when a man driving a lumber-waggon kept crossing the road in front of him, hindering his progress. Mr. Haldimands gradually got into a towering passion, which resulted in his springing out, throwing the reins to the lady, and rushing furiously at the teamster with his fists squared, shouting in a perfect scream, "Flesh and blood can't bear this. One of us must die!" The man whipped up his horses and made off, and Mr. Haldimands tried in vain to hush up a story which made him appear so superlatively ridiculous.

We actually paid some morning visits, and I thought the society very agreeable and free from gossip. One of our visits was paid to the family of one of the oldest settlers in Canada. His place was the very perfection of beauty; it was built in a park formed out of a civilised wood, the grounds extending to the verge of a precipice, looking from which I saw the river, sometimes glittering in the sunshine, sometimes foaming along in a wood - just realising Mrs. Moodie's charming description of the Otonabee. Far below, the water glittered like diamond sparks among the dark woods; pines had fallen into and across it, in the way in which trees only fall in America, and no two trees were of the same tint; the wild vine hung over the precipice, and smothered the trees with its clusters and tendrils; and hurriedly in some places, gently in others, the cold rivulet flowed down to the lake, - no bold speculator having as yet dared to turn the water privilege to account.

My first ride was an amusing one, for various reasons. My riding-habit was left at Toronto, but this seemed not to be a difficulty. Mrs. Forrest's fashionable habit and white gauntlet-gloves fitted me beautifully; and the difficulty about a hat was at once overcome by sending to an obliging neighbour, who politely sent a very stylish-looking plumed riding-hat. There was a side-saddle and a most elegant bridle; indeed, the whole equipment would not have disgraced Rotten Row. But, the horse! My courage had to be "screwed to the sticking point" before I could mount him. He was a very fine animal - a magnificent coal-black charger sixteen hands high, with a most determined will of his own, not broken for the saddle. Mr. Forrest rode a splendid bay, which seldom went over six consecutive yards of ground without performing some erratic movement. My horse's paces were, a tremendous trot, breaking sometimes into a furious gallop, in both which he acted in a perfectly independent manner, any attempts of mine to control him with my whole strength and weight being alike useless. We came to the top of a precipice overlooking the river, where his gyrations were so fearful that I turned him into the bush. It appeared to me a ride of imminent dangers and hair-breadth escapes. By this beauteous river we came to a place where rain and flood had worn the precipice into a steep declivity, shelving towards another precipice, and my horse, accustomed to it, took me down where an English donkey would scarcely have ventured.

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