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.
