Soon After Our Arrival At C - -, I Remember Asking A Person, Who
Was What The Canadians Call "A Hickory Quaker," From The North Of
Ireland, To Help Me To A Bit Of Very Nice Salmon-Trout, Which Was
Vanishing Alarmingly Fast From The Breakfast-Table.
Obadiah very considerately lent a deaf ear to my repeated
entreaties, pretending to be intently occupied with his own
Plate of
fish; then, transferring the remains of the salmon-trout to his own
place, he turned round to me with the most innocent face imaginable,
saying very coolly, "I beg your pardon, friend, did you speak to me?
There is such a noise at the table, I cannot hear very well."
Between meals there is "considerable of drinking," among the idlers
about the tavern, of the various ingenious Yankee inventions
resorted to in this country to disturb the brain. In the evening the
plot thickens, and a number of young and middle-aged men drop in,
and are found in little knots in the different public rooms.
The practice of "treating" is almost universal in this country, and,
though friendly and sociable in its way, is the fruitful source of
much dissipation. It is almost impossible, in travelling, to steer
clear of this evil habit. Strangers are almost invariably drawn into
it in the course of business.
The town of C - - being the point where a large number of emigrants
landed on their way to the backwoods of this part of the colony,
it became for a time a place of great resort, and here a number of
land-jobbers were established, who made a profitable trade of buying
lands from private individuals, or at the government sales of wild
land, and selling them again to the settlers from the old country.
Though my wife had some near relatives settled in the backwoods,
about forty miles inland, to the north of C - -, I had made up my
mind to buy a cleared farm near Lake Ontario, if I could get one to
my mind, and the price of which would come within my limited means.
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