It was then that prudence whispered to the
father, "you are happy and contented now, but this cannot always
last; the birth of that child whom you have hailed with as much
rapture as though she were born to inherit a noble estate, is to
you the beginning of care. Your family may increase, and your wants
will increase in proportion; out of what fund can you satisfy their
demands? Some provision must be made for the future, and made
quickly, while youth and health enable you to combat successfully
with the ills of life. When you married for inclination, you knew
that emigration must be the result of such an act of imprudence in
over-populated England. Up and be doing, while you still possess
the means of transporting yourself to a land where the industrious
can never lack bread, and where there is a chance that wealth and
independence may reward virtuous toil."
Alas! that truth should ever whisper such unpleasant realities to
the lover of ease - to the poet, the author, the musician, the man
of books, of refined taste and gentlemanly habits. Yet he took the
hint, and began to bestir himself with the spirit and energy so
characteristic of the glorious North, from whence he sprung.
"The sacrifice," he said, "must be made, and the sooner the better.
My dear wife, I feel confident that you will respond to the call of
duty, and, hand-in-hand and heart-in-heart we will go forth to meet
difficulties, and, by the help of God, to subdue them."
Dear husband! I take shame to myself that my purpose was less firm,
that my heart lingered so far behind yours in preparing for this
great epoch in our lives; that, like Lot's wife, I still turned and
looked back, and clung with all my strength to the land I was
leaving. It was not the hardships of an emigrant's life I dreaded.
I could bear mere physical privations philosophically enough; it was
the loss of the society in which I had moved, the want of congenial
minds, of persons engaged in congenial pursuits, that made me so
reluctant to respond to my husband's call.
I was the youngest in a family remarkable for their literary
attainments; and, while yet a child, I had seen riches melt away
from our once prosperous home, as the Canadian snows dissolve before
the first warm days of spring, leaving the verdureless earth naked
and bare.
There was, however, a spirit in my family that rose superior to the
crushing influences of adversity. Poverty, which so often degrades
the weak mind, became their best teacher, the stern but fruitful
parent of high resolve and ennobling thought.
