Progress of improvement in Canada,
respecting which my judgment has been matured by experience and
observation; but such considerations would be out of place in
volumes like the present, and I shall therefore proceed with my
narrative.
I had obtained my cleared farm on easy terms, and, in so far as the
probability of procuring a comfortable subsistence was concerned,
we had no reason to complain; but comfort and happiness do not
depend entirely on a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. Some
of our neighbours were far from being agreeable to us. Being fresh
from England, it could hardly be expected that we could at once
accommodate ourselves to the obtrusive familiarity of persons who
had no conception of any differences in taste or manners arising
from education and habits acquired in a more refined state of
society. I allude more particularly to some rude and demoralised
American farmers from the United States, who lived in our immediate
neighbourhood. Our neighbours from the same country were worthy,
industrious people; but, on the whole, the evil greatly predominated
over the good amongst them.
At a few miles' distance from our farm, we had some intelligent
English neighbours, of a higher class; but they were always so
busily occupied with their farming operations that they had little
leisure or inclination for that sort of easy intercourse to which
we had been accustomed.
