wolf howl, as he imagined, and ran for his life. It was the hooting of an owl!

I learned at school that our winters were growing milder; I have never learned it elsewhere. The immigrant from the British Isles felt the cold less than do his descendants, or than even himself after the first few years. He often went bare-handed in barn or bush on the coldest days. Yet, blood-freezing were the accounts of frost sometimes sent "home." One son of Erin declared that the "tay" froze on its way to his mouth! Sheltered by woods, nobody heeded the cold. Men preferred chopping in the bush to threshing in the barn. The barn is still a cold, wretched place, but you get out of it now in a few hours. Not so in olden times. Threshing was an all-winter job. Did you ever see a flail! two sticks jointed with a thong. Fancy pounding for months at a mow which the machine would shell out in half a day! Thud! thud! thud!— such was your grandsire's winter pastime!

How is it to-day? The engine comes screaming along the king's highway, wheels in at the gate, up the lane, round to the barn-door. Down pour the sheaves, to be chewed, and whisked, and whirled into mounds of empty straw and bins of golden grain; sheaves shooting down the iron throat, straw shooting out in rolls, mows dwindling down, mounds swelling up; bag-heaped wagons wheeling away the precious outcome of a season's toil. A few hours and all is over. What a change from the thud! thud! thud!

And some say the world does not improve! It does improve-at least on its material side. Can the same be said of its moral advance! Do honour, integrity, square-dealing, stand where they stood in the early days! Why, the pioneers seldom or never had writings in their ordinary dealings and contracts with each other. A man's word was his bond; and woe betide him who broke it! He had better pack up and go. How is it now? Not quite the same. A sterling integrity still characterizes the great majority; but "smartness" is more in evidence; and sharp practice seems less severely rebuked and frowned out, than in the early days.

Ninety years ago this Ottawa Valley was an almost unbroken forest -no Pembroke, Ottawa, Smith's Falls, and very little Perth. In 1806 Philemon Wright founded Hull and the great lumber industry; and Col. By founded Bytown in 1826. Richmond was started in 1818 by disbanded soldiers. Roads there were none-hardly so much as a foot-path in the woods! Could a man then have looked down from a balloon on this region, what would have met his eye? One interminable forest, broken

only by patches and ribbons of water, and a small opening here and there, indicated by the up-curling smoke from the cabin of the solitary settler. Peering down into the twilight depths of the woods, he might also see a man staggering along from tree to tree, with a bag of wheat on his back. Up hill and down dale he goes; stepping over boulders and roots; climbing over fallen trees; wedging his way through thick undergrowth; painfully skirting dismal, slimy sloughs; now over the shoes in mud; now up to the knees in water; here, struggling through that hideous jungle, the cedar swamp; there, straining across a tamarac muskeag, or the leaf-carpeted hardwood heights; scaling hills and fording streams, his eye ever and anon scanning the tree-trunks for a "blaze," his sole guide through the labyrinth, till at last, weary and worn, scratched and bleeding, and half-famished, he emerges in sight of the mill that is to convert his few pounds of grain into flour for his family and himself. My own grandfather made these trips-fifteen miles to the mill where Perth now stands; and many others had the like delightful experience. I have heard of a woman thus carrying a bushel of seed potatoes forty miles!

To the spot where I write, among the orchard trees bending low with fruit, and fields of waving grain, came, ninety-three years ago, a settler, his wife, and four little ones, from Bytown, through some forty miles of woods. He carried a bed on his back; and, on the top of this, his youngest child. All were on foot. No road, no path. The "blaze, and in wet places, some "string-pieces" to walk on, were all. Around them the wild woods, the wolf, the lynx, and the bear, kept aloof at night by the camp-fire. What a change from the green fields and broad highways of the Emerald Isle! Inside his front gate stands an oak, three feet in diameter, on which, when a sapling, he cut the date of his arrival, 1819. The figures shew there still.

Past that tree, that same year, walked the Duke of Richmond on his melancholy journey from Perth to Richmond village, then but one year old. I had the sad story of his last hours from Mrs. Taylor, a soldier's wife, who kept the "Masonic Arms" hotel, where he lodged with his suite the night before his death. At table, the sight of a glass of water agitated him greatly. All night long he walked the verandah to and fro. Next morning the party started in canoes down the Jock river, making for the Rideau, Bytown, and Quebec. They had gone but a little way when the Duke, in agony, begged hard to be set ashore. No sooner did his foot touch land than he bounded off through the bush with the speed of a deer! About three miles below Richmond he was found prostrate on some hay in a little barn. Before medical aid could be had from Perth,

he died. Mrs. Taylor herself laid out the corpse. She said he was a splendid specimen of manhood.

"Blazes" and "string-pieces" in course of time gave way to "corduroy." I wonder how many now living ever jolted over this. It consisted of round logs laid crosswise side by side. To go bumping over these in a springless cart or wagon was an experience not soon forgotten. They said it was good for the liver; but it must have been hard on the teeth, and perilous to the tongue. Oh! the carriages we went so proudly in, to market or to church, in those days! None of your flimsy, frail topbuggies, or luxurious, elastic phaetons; but stout vehicles-solid square boxes on solid square axles, in the solid hubs of solid wheels, bumping over solid logs! You sat on an inch board, laid across the box. Not much spring in that, and still less in the box. Later on, four stout hooks, hung on the box, upheld two poles on which the backless seats rested. This was a great step in advance. Many a pleasant ride was had on these poles and uncushioned seats; and many a jolly wedding party thus went to the church; and more than once have I seen a manly arm steal round a slender waist on the back seat of this same primeval chariot.

In summer time no boots or shoes were worn at school, and not too many even at church. Children actually exulted in freedom from footwear when the snow was gone. Tender at first, the sole of the foot soon thickened and hardened. As the boy grew towards manhood he began to blush for bare feet in church, and took to boots; the girl, somewhat earlier. Yet it was a common practice for girls to carry their shoes and stockings in their hands until they came near the village or the church, when they put them on; removing them at the same place on the homeward tramp. This spared shoe-leather. It was also more congenial to feet that had been six days free, and loathed confinement on the seventh.

To keep a large household shod even in winter was a problem. Skates were not in use as yet-"sliding" was the ice-sport; and it soon wore out the boot-soles. The settler had his calf-skins and cow-hides tanned, and as the winter approached, the peripatetic shoemaker of those days came round and shod the whole family, passing on from house to house. The tailor did likewise, for "homespun" was the prevailing garb. The women of the family, however, usually not only spun the yarn, but "made it up" when converted into cloth or flannel by the local weaver. Both sexes were clad in this, even at church, or social gatherings. No furs on man or woman; no silks or satins; no "fine feathers" of any sort. Dame Fashion had no votaries in the "Bush." Even the dance was done in "homespun."

Still, they enjoyed it to their heart's content

All cares forgotten in their merriment.

No stiff formality intruded there;

Nor were the ladies' dresses rich and rare.

No pearls or bracelets circled neck or arms,
And yet the forest maiden had her charms;
For, eyes are eyes-an archery that tells
On rustic hearts as those of city "swells."

Hodge sees the blue eyes-not the flannel dress-
And seeks his couch in painful blessedness!

"Fine feathers make fine birds." But love can see

The gem that shines 'neath homespun millin'ry.

Franktown, 35 miles from Ottawa, 15 miles from Perth, and where the stage roads from Bytown to Perth and from Brockville to the upper Ottawa crossed, is now a railroad-killed village. Once it was a stirring place. Its Fair, then a great event, is now a mere name. A big day for the sale of live stock and for fun; the whole population for miles around was there, with buyers from distant towns. When cheap whiskey (a penny a glass) had begun to warm hearts to excessive friendship, and this developed into maudlin embraces, culminating in high voices and angry words-then might you behold a sea of upturned faces, bare heads, and clenched fists, ebbing and flowing, swinging and swaying to and fro, and foaming like a boiling cauldron; nobody struck, as no one had room to strike, and not a soul in the crowd able to tell why he was there, or what the row was about. All whiskey! These wild men were most peaceable citizens in every-day life; in fact, for peace and order, Beckwith was, and is, a model Township.

The live-stock buyer did not then pass from house to house. All animals went to the fair, or were slaughtered and hauled to market. Porkraising flourished-for the "shanties." The hog reached a venerable age ere his grunting ceased; now all good pigs die young. What monsters they often were! 500 lbs. quite common; fat, six to nine inches on shoulder! These for the "shanty men." And what potato labour they caused! Acres on acres of this tuber to fatten them; thirty to forty wagon loads to the present three or four. Potato-digging meant, for us youngsters, shivering and shaking, and blowing of cold fingers. The Colorado bug had not yet appeared.

The early settler's work was never over; not even in winter and night closed in. All day long was he chopping or threshing, and tend

ing stock; at night there were shingles, spiles, or sleighs to make-perchance also boots and shoes, for some non-professionals made even these. All this before the blazing hearth; the women quilting, sewing, knitting, or plaiting straw for hats, or making these; the juveniles babbling over their lessons for the morrow. A busy, yet cosy, domestic scene, more full of content than are sometimes the palaces of the proud. Pine or cedar blocks gave the shingles and spiles; wheat or rye straw, the hats. No sewing or knitting machines in those days.

Thus passed the winter evenings. At last come the March sun, the hard snow crust, and the sugar-camp. Glorious morning scampers on the crust under crystal skies; reviving suns beginning to shower down new largess of life on a world long dead; Nature rubbing her eyes and coming forth in squirrel and chipmonk, woodpecker and crow; her herald the tapper, with clink of axe and gouge from tree to tree. A sound as music to the boyish ear! It seemed as the first note of a psalm of life, after the long winter death; and it spake of the joys of the sugar season. All this is clean gone now, never to return. A gruesome change is here from the glowing fires beneath the over-arching woods which rang with mirth and song as the young people gathered in for the "sugaring-off," or roamed from camp to camp in friendly invasion, awakening the echoes of the night with clamour and glee, after long months of a quasi-imprisonment. A fine time for the boys-how went it with the women? I see them now with their pails, wading through snow thigh-deep from tree to tree, gathering the sap; trudging over vast areas of bush, heavily laden; struggling to lift and empty the ponderous sap-troughs, and wending their way back to camp, weary and be-drabbled to the knees, boots and stockings soaked! Then to the wearisome boiling again, pelted with rain, sleet, hail or snow; half blinded with smoke, and alternately chilled by the cold blast and fried by the licentions flame. Women did all save tap the trees and lay in the fluel. No roof save the leafless tree tops covered their heads; no friendly wall screend them from the blast. So fared the wives and daughters of the best in the land; the men occupied with matters still more urgent. They sat in no Ladies' Colleges, took no music lessons, had no pianos or organs. Talk of heroes and heroines! The Ontario woods were full of them! For, does it not demand less real courage to flash out in some fiery deed of valour, soon over, and under admiring eyes, than to fight a life-long battle with the wilderness, unnoticed and unapplauded? No costly marble chronicles their deeds, but the maple scars tell a little of their story; a great Dominion is their monument.

As late as the "forties" the housewife still lighted her fire, and the