Ignorant of
all this, I put my unrisen bread into a cold kettle, and heaped a
large quantity of hot ashes above and below it. The first intimation
I had of the result of my experiment was the disagreeable odour of
burning bread filling the house.
"What is this horrid smell?" cried Tom, issuing from his domicile,
in his shirt sleeves. "Do open the door, Bell (to the maid); I feel
quite sick."
"It is the bread," said I, taking the lid of the oven with the
tongs. "Dear me, it is all burnt!"
"And smells as sour as vinegar," says he. "The black bread of
Sparta!"
Alas! for my maiden loaf! With a rueful face I placed it on the
breakfast table. "I hoped to have given you a treat, but I fear you
will find it worse than the cakes in the pan."
"You may be sure of that," said Tom, as he stuck his knife into the
loaf, and drew it forth covered with raw dough. "Oh, Mrs. Moodie!
I hope you make better books than bread."
We were all sadly disappointed. The others submitted to my failure
good-naturedly, and made it the subject of many droll, but not
unkindly, witicisms. For myself, I could have borne the severest
infliction from the pen of the most formidable critic with more
fortitude than I bore the cutting up of my first loaf of bread.
After breakfast, Moodie and Wilson rode into the town; and when they
returned at night brought several long letters for me. Ah! those
first kind letters from home! Never shall I forget the rapture with
which I grasped them - the eager, trembling haste with which I tore
them open, while the blinding tears which filled my eyes hindered me
for some minutes from reading a word which they contained. Sixteen
years have slowly passed away - it appears half a century - but never,
never can home letters give me the intense joy those letters did.
After seven years' exile, the hope of return grows feeble, the means
are still less in our power, and our friends give up all hope of our
return; their letters grow fewer and colder, their expressions of
attachment are less vivid; the heart has formed new ties, and the
poor emigrant is nearly forgotten. Double those years, and it is as
if the grave had closed over you, and the hearts that once knew and
loved you know you no more.
Tom, too, had a large packet of letters, which he read with great
glee. After re-perusing them, he declared his intention of setting
off on his return home the next day. We tried to persuade him to
stay until the following spring, and make a fair trial of the
country. Arguments were thrown away upon him; the next morning our
eccentric friend was ready to start.
"Good-bye!" quoth he, shaking me by the hand as if he meant to sever
it from the wrist. "When next we meet it will be in New South Wales,
and I hope by that time you will know how to make better bread." And
thus ended Tom Wilson's emigration to Canada. He brought out three
hundred pounds, British currency; he remained in the country just
four months, and returned to England with barely enough to pay his
passage home.
THE BACKWOODSMAN
Son of the isles! rave not to me
Of the old world's pride and luxury;
Why did you cross the western deep,
Thus like a love-lorn maid to weep
O'er comforts gone and pleasures fled,
'Mid forests wild to earn your bread?
Did you expect that Art would vie
With Nature here, to please the eye;
That stately tower, and fancy cot,
Would grace each rude concession lot;
That, independent of your hearth,
Men would admit your claims to birth?
No tyrant's fetter binds the soul,
The mind of man's above control;
Necessity, that makes the slave,
Has taught the free a course more brave;
With bold, determined heart to dare
The ills that all are born to share.
Believe me, youth, the truly great
Stoop not to mourn o'er fallen state;
They make their wants and wishes less,
And rise superior to distress;
The glebe they break - the sheaf they bind -
But elevates a noble mind.
Contented in my rugged cot,
Your lordly towers I envy not;
Though rude our clime and coarse our cheer,
True independence greets you here;
Amid these forests, dark and wild,
Dwells honest labour's hardy child.
His happy lot I gladly share,
And breathe a purer, freer air;
No more by wealthy upstart spurn'd,
The bread is sweet by labour earn'd;
Indulgent heaven has bless'd the soil,
And plenty crowns the woodman's toil.
Beneath his axe, the forest yields
Its thorny maze to fertile fields;
This goodly breadth of well-till'd land,
Well-purchased by his own right hand,
With conscience clear, he can bequeath
His children, when he sleeps in death.
CHAPTER VII
UNCLE JOE AND HIS FAMILY
"Ay, your rogue is a laughing rogue, and not a whit the less
dangerous for the smile on his lip, which comes not from an
honest heart, which reflects the light of the soul through
the eye. All is hollow and dark within; and the contortion
of the lip, like the phosophoric glow upon decayed timber,
only serves to point out the rotteness within."
Uncle Joe! I see him now before me, with his jolly red face,
twinkling black eyes, and rubicund nose. No thin, weasel-faced
Yankee was he, looking as if he had lived upon 'cute ideas and
speculations all his life; yet Yankee he was by birth, ay, and in
mind, too; for a more knowing fellow at a bargain never crossed the
lakes to abuse British institutions and locate himself comfortably
among despised Britishers.
