Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush (41 page)

“May old England long lift her white crest o’er the wave,
The birth-place of science, the home of the brave!
In her cities may peace and prosperity dwell!
May her daughters in beauty and virtue excel!
    
May their beauty and worth
    Bless the land of their birth,
While heroes keep guard o’er the altar and hearth!”

W
e left Niagara at noon. A very pleasant drive brought us to Queenstone, and we stepped on board the “Chief Justice” steamboat, that had just touched the wharf, and was on her return trip to Toronto.

Tired and ill, I was glad to lie down in one of the berths in the ladies’ cabin to rest, and, if possible, to obtain a little sleep. This I soon found was out of the question. Two or three noisy, spoiled children kept up a constant din; and their grandmother, a very nice-looking old lady, who seemed nurse-general to them all, endeavoured in vain to keep them quiet. Their mother was reading a novel, and took it very easy; reclining on a comfortable sofa, she left her old mother all the fatigue of taking care of the children, and waiting upon herself.

This is by no means an uncommon trait of Canadian character. In families belonging more especially to the
middle class, who have raised themselves from a lower to a higher grade, the mother, if left in poor circumstances, almost invariably holds a subordinate position in her wealthier son or daughter’s family. She superintends the servants, and nurses the younger children; and her time is occupied by a number of minute domestic labours, that allow her very little rest in her old age.

I have seen the grandmother in a wealthy family ironing the fine linen, or broiling over the cook-stove, while her daughter held her place in the drawing-room. How differently in my own country are these things ordered! where the most tender attention is paid to the aged, all their wants studied, and their comfort regarded as a sacred thing.

Age in Canada is seldom honoured. You would imagine it almost a crime for anyone to grow old with such slighting, cold indifference are the aged treated by the young and strong. It is not unusual to hear a lad speak of his father, perhaps, in the prime of life, as the “old fellow,” the “old boy,” and to address a grey-haired man in this disrespectful and familiar manner. This may not be apparent to the natives themselves, but it never fails to strike every stranger that visits the colony.

To be a servant is a lot sufficiently hard – to have all your actions dictated to you by the will of another – to enjoy no rest or recreation, but such as is granted as a very great favour; but to be a humble dependent in old age on children, to whom all the best years of your life were devoted with all the energy of maternal love, must be sad indeed. But they submit with great apparent cheerfulness, and seem to think it necessary to work for the shelter of a child’s roof, and the bread they eat.

The improved circumstances of families, whose parents, in the first settlement of the country, had to work very hard for their general maintenance, may be the cause of this inversion
of moral duties, and the parents not being considered properly on an equality with their better dressed and better educated offspring; but from whatever cause it springs, the effect it produces on the mind of a stranger is very painful. It is difficult to feel much respect for anyone who looks down upon father or mother as an inferior being, and, as such, considers them better qualified to perform the coarse drudgeries of life. Time, we hope, will remedy this evil, with many others of the same class.

There was a bride, too, on board – a very delicate looking young woman, who was returning from a tour in the States to her native village. She seemed very much to dread the ordeal she had yet to pass through – in sitting dressed up for a whole week to receive visitors. Nor did I in the least wonder at her repugnance to go through this trying piece of ceremonial, which is absolutely indispensable in Canada.

The Monday after the bride and bridegroom make their first appearance at church, every person in the same class prepares to pay them a visit of congratulation; and if the town is large, and the parties well known, the making of visits to the bride lasts to the end of the week.

The bride, who is often a young girl from sixteen to twenty years of age, is doomed for this period to sit upon a sofa or reclined in an easy chair, dressed in the most expensive manner, to receive her guests.

Well she knows that herself, her dress, the furniture of her room, even her cake and wine, will undergo the most minute scrutiny, and be the theme of conversation among all the gossips of the place for the next nine days. No wonder that she feels nervous, and that her manners are constrained, and that nothing looks easy or natural about her, from her neck-ribbon to her shoe-tie.

“Have you seen the bride yet? What do you think of her? How was she dressed? Is she tall, or short? Pretty, or plain? Stupid, or clever? Lively, or quiet?” are all questions certain to be asked, and answered according to the taste and judgment of the parties to whom they are put; besides those thousand little interludes which spring from envy, ill-nature, and all uncharitableness. The week following they, in courtesy, must return all these visits; and, oh, what a relief it must be when all this stiff complimentary nonsense is over, and they are once more at home to themselves and their own particular friends!

There is another custom, peculiar to Canada and the United States, which I cordially approve, and should be very much grieved for its discontinuance.

On New-Year’s day all the gentlemen in the place call upon their friends, to wish them a happy new year, and to exchange friendly greetings with the ladies of the family, who are always in readiness to receive them, and make them a return for these marks of neighbourly regard, in the substantial form of rich cakes, fruit, wine, coffee, and tea. It is generally a happy, cheerful day; all faces wear a smile, old quarrels are forgotten, and everyone seems anxious to let ill-will and heart-burnings die with the old year.

A gentleman who wishes to drop an inconvenient acquaintance, has only to omit calling upon his friend’s wife and daughters on New-Year’s day, without making a suitable apology for the omission of this usual act of courtesy, and the hint is acknowledged by a direct cut the next time the parties meet in public.

It is an especial frolic for all the lads who have just returned from school or college to enjoy their Christmas holidays. Cakes and sweetmeats are showered upon them in abundance, and they feel themselves of vast importance, while
paying their compliments to the ladies, and running from house to house, with their brief congratulatory address –“I wish you all a happy New Year!”

It would be a thousand pities if this affectionate, time-honoured, hospitable custom, should be swept away by the march of modern improvement. Some ladies complain that it gives a number of vulgar, under-bred men, the opportunity of introducing themselves to the notice and company of their daughters. There may be some reasonable truth in this remark; but after all it is but for one day, and the kindly greetings exchanged are more productive of good than evil.

The evening of New-Year’s day is generally devoted to dancing parties, when the young especially meet to enjoy themselves.

The Wesleyan Methodists always “pray the old year out and the new year in,” as it is termed here, and they could not celebrate its advent in a more rational and improving manner. Their midnight anthem of praise is a sacred and beautiful offering to Him, whose vast existence is not meted out like ours, and measured by days and years.

Large parties given to very young children, which are so common in this country, are very pernicious in the way in which they generally operate upon youthful minds. They foster the passions of vanity and envy, and produce a love of dress and display which is very repulsive in the character of a child. Little girls who are in the constant habit of attending these parties, soon exchange the natural manners and frank simplicity so delightful at their age, for the confidence and flippancy of women long hacked in the ways of the world.

For some time after I settled in the town, I was not myself aware that any evil could exist in a harmless party of children playing together at the house of a mutual friend. But
observation has convinced me that I was in error; that these parties operate like a forcing bed upon young plants, with this difference, that they bring to maturity the seeds of
evil
, instead of those of goodness and virtue, and that a child accustomed to the heated atmosphere of pleasure, is not likely in maturer years to enjoy the pure air and domestic avocations of home.

These juvenile parties appear to do less mischief to boys than to girls. They help to humanize the one, and to make heartless coquets of the other. The boys meet for a down-right romping play with each other; the girls to be caressed and admired, to show off their fine dresses, and to gossip about the dress and appearance of their neighbours.

I know that I shall be called hard-hearted for this assertion; but it is true. I have frequently witnessed what I relate, both at my own house and the houses of others; and those who will take the pains to listen to the conversation of these miniature women, will soon yield a willing assent to my observations, and keep their little ones apart from such scenes, in the pure atmosphere of home. The garden or the green field is the best place for children, who can always derive entertainment and instruction from nature and her beautiful works. Left to their own choice, the gay party would be a
bore
, far less entertaining than a game of blind-man’s buff in the schoolroom, when lessons were over. It is the vanity of parents that fosters the same spirit in their children.

The careless, disrespectful manner often used in this country by children to their parents, is an evil which in all probability originates in this early introduction of young people into the mysteries of society. They imagine themselves persons of consequence, and that their opinion is quite equal in weight to the experience and superior knowledge of their elders. We cannot imagine a more revolting sight than
a young lad presuming to treat his father with disrespect and contempt, and daring presumptuously to contradict him before ignorant idlers like himself.

“You are wrong, Sir; it is not so” –“Mamma, that is not true; I know better,” are expressions which I have heard with painful surprise from young people in this country; and the parents have sunk into silence, evidently abashed at the reproof of an insolent child.

These remarks are made with no ill-will, but with a sincere hope that they may prove beneficial to the community at large, and be the means of removing some of the evils which are to be found in our otherwise pleasant and rapidly-improving society.

I know that it would be easier for me to gain the approbation of the Canadian public, by exaggerating the advantages to be derived from a settlement in the colony, by praising all the good qualities of her people, and by throwing a flattering veil over their defects; but this is not my object, and such servile adulation would do them no good, and degrade me in my own eyes. I have written what I consider to be the truth, and as such I hope it may do good, by preparing the minds of emigrants for what they will
really find
, rather than by holding out fallacious hopes that can never be realized.

In “Roughing it in the Bush,” I gave an honest personal statement of
facts
. I related nothing but what had really happened; and if illustrations were wanting of persons who had suffered
as much
, and been reduced to the same straits, I could furnish a dozen volumes without having to travel many hundred miles for subjects.

We worked hard and struggled manfully with overwhelming difficulties, yet I have been abused most unjustly by the Canadian papers for revealing some of the mysteries of the Backwoods. Not one word was said
against the country
in my
book, as was falsely asserted. It was written as a warning to well-educated persons not to settle in localities for which they were unfitted by their
previous habits and education
. In this I hoped to confer a service both on them and Canada; for the
prosperous
settlement of such persons on cleared farms must prove more beneficial to the colony than their
ruin in the bush
.

It was likewise very cruelly and falsely asserted, that I had spoken ill of the
Irish people
, because I described the revolting scene we witnessed at Grosse Isle, the actors in which were principally Irish emigrants of the
very lowest class
. Had I been able to give the whole details of what we saw on that island, the terms applied to the people who furnished such disgusting pictures would have been echoed by their own countrymen. This was one of those cases in which it was
impossible
to reveal the
whole truth
.

The few Irish characters that occur in my narrative have been drawn with an
affectionate
, not a malignant hand. We had very few Irish settlers round us in the bush, and to them I never owed the least obligation. The contrary of this has been asserted, and I am accused of
ingratitude
by one editor for benefits I never received, and which I was too proud to ask, always preferring to work with my own hands, rather than to
borrow
or
beg
from others. All the kind acts of courtesy I received from the
poor Indians
this gentleman thought fit to turn over to the Irish, in order to hold me up as a monster of ingratitude to his countrymen.

In the case of Jenny Buchannon and John Monaghan,
the only two Irish people
with whom I had anything to do, the benefits were surely mutual. Monaghan came to us a runaway apprentice, – not, by-the-bye, the best recommendation for a servant. We received him starving and ragged, paid him good wages, and treated him with great kindness. The boy turned
out a grateful and attached creature, which cannot possible confer the opposite character upon us.

Jenny’s love and affection
will sufficiently prove
our ingratitude
to
her
. To the good qualities of these people I have done ample justice. In what, then, does my ingratitude to the
Irish people
consist? I should feel much obliged to the writer in the
London Observer
to enlighten me on this head, or those editors of Canadian papers, who, without reading for themselves, servilely copied a
falsehood
.