CHAPTER XXXVI.

Away with these! true wisdom's world will be
Within its own creation, or in thine,

Are not the mountains, waves and skies a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion?

Childe Harold.-Canto III.

WHEN we first took our delighted abode in the "framed house," a palace of some twenty by thirty feet, flanked by a shanty kitchen, and thatched with oak shingles,-a sober neighbour, who having passed most of his life in the country, is extremely philosophical on the follies of civilization, took my husband to task on the appearance of the ghost of a departed parlour carpet, which he said was "introducing luxury." Whether from this bad example, I cannot tell, but it is certain that our neighbours are many of them beginning to perceive that carpets "save trouble." Women are the most reasonable beings in the world; at least, I am sure nobody ever catches a woman without an unanswerable reason for anything she wishes to do. Mrs. Micah Balwhidder only wanted a silver tea-pot, because, as all the world knows, tea tastes better out of silver; and Mrs. Primrose loved her crimson paduasoy,

merely because her husband had happened to say it became her.

Of the mingled mass of our country population, a goodly and handsome proportion-goodly as to numbers, and handsome as to cheeks and lips, and thews and sinews, consists of young married people just beginning the world; simple in their habits, moderate in their aspirations, and hoarding a little of old-fashioned romance, unconsciously enough, in the secret nooks of their rustic hearts. These find no fault with their bare loggeries. With a shelter and a handful of furni ture they have enough. If there is the wherewithal to spread a warm supper for "th' old man " when he comes in from work, the young wife forgets the long, solitary, wordless day, and asks no greater happiness than preparing it by the help of such materials and such utensils as would be looked at with utter contempt in a comfortable kitchen; and then the youthful pair sit down and enjoy it together, with a zest that the "orgies parfaites" of the epicure can never awaken. What lack they that this world can bestow? They have youth, and health, and love and hope, occupation and amusement, and when you have added "meat, clothes, and fire," what more has England's fair young queen? These people are contented, of course.

There is another class of settlers neither so numerous nor so happy; people, who have left small farms in the eastward states, and come to Michigan with the hope of acquiring property at a more rapid rate. They have sold off, perhaps at considerable pecuniary disadvantage the home of their early married life; sacrificed the convenient furniture which had become ne

cessary to daily comfort, and only awake when it is too late, to the fact that it kills old vines to tear them from their clinging-places. These people are much to be pitied, the women especially.

The ladies first

'Gin murmur-as becomes the softer sex.

Woman's little world is overclouded for lack of the old familiar means and appliances. The husband goes to his work with the same axe or hoe which fitted his hand in his old woods and fields, he tills the same soil, or perhaps a far richer and more hopeful one-he gazes on the same book of nature which he has read from his infancy, and sees only a fresher and more glowing page; and he returns to his home with the sun, strong in heart and full of self-gratulation on the favourable change in his lot. But he finds the homebird drooping and disconsolate. She has been looking in vain for the reflection of any of the cherished features of her own dear fire-side. She has found a thousand deficiencies which her rougher mate can scarce be taught to feel as evils. What cares he if the time-honoured cupboard is meagerly represented by a few oak-boards lying on pegs and called shelves? His tea-equipage shines as it was wont-the biscuits can hardly stay on the brightly glistening plates. Will he find fault with the clay-built oven, or even the tin "reflector?" His bread never was better baked. What does he want with the great old cushioned rocking-chair? When he is tired he goes to bed, for he is never tired till bed-time. Women are the grumblers

in Michigan, and they have some apology. Many of them have made sacrifices for which they were not at all prepared, and which detract largely from their every day stores of comfort. The conviction of good accruing on a large scale does not prevent the wearing sense of minor deprivations.

Another large class of emigrants is composed of people of broken fortunes, or who have been unsuccesful in past undertakings. These like or dislike the country on various grounds, as their peculiar condition may vary. Those who are fortunate or industrious look at their new home with a kindly eye. Those who learn by experience that idlers are no better off in Michigan than elsewhere, can find no terms too virulent in which to express their angry disappointment. The profligate and unprincipled lead stormy and uncomfortable lives any where; and Michigan, now at least, begins to regard such characters among her adopted children, with a stern and unfriendly eye, so that the few who may have come among us, hoping for the unwatched and unbridled license which we read of in regions nearer to the setting sun, find themselves marked and shunned as in the older world.

As women feel sensibly the deficiencies of the "salvage" state, so they are the first to attempt the refin ing process, the introduction of those important nothings on which so much depends. Small additions to the more delicate or showy part of the household gear are accomplished by the aid of some little extra personal exertion. "Spinning-money" buys a looking-glass perhaps, or butter-money" a nice cherry table. Eglantines and wood-vine, or wild-cucumber, are

66

sought and transplanted to shade the windows. Nar row beds round the house are bright with Balsams and Sweet Williams, Four o'clocks, Poppies and Marigolds; and if "th' old man" is good natured, a little gate takes the place of the great awkward bars before the door. By and bye a few apple-trees are set out; sweet briars grace the door yard, and lilacs and currant-bushes; all by female effort—at least I have never yet happened to see it otherwise where these improvements have been made at all. They are not all accomplished by her own hand indeed, but hers is the moving spirit, and if she do her "spiriting gently,” and has anything but a Caliban for a minister, she can scarcely fail to throw over the real homeliness of her lot something of the magic of that IDEAL which has been truly sung

Nymph of our soul, and brightener of our being;

She makes the common waters musical

Binds the rude night-winds in a silver thrall,
Bids Hybla's thyme and Tempe's violet dwell
Round the green marge of her moon-haunted cell.

un

This shadowy power, or power of shadows is the " archvanquisher of time and care" every where; but most of all needed in the waveless calm of a strictly woodland life, and there most enjoyed. The lovers of " written poetry" may find it in the daily talk of our rustic neighbours-in their superstitions-in the remedies which they propose for every ill of humanity, the ideal makes the charm of their life as it does that of all the world's, peer and poet, wood-cutter and servingmaid.