Everywhere, if contemporary prints of the cities may be taken as evidence, the military element was very prominent, and the tone was distinctly English. The leaders of society looked {27} to London for their fashions, and men like John Beverley Robinson moved naturally, if a little stiffly, in the best English circles when they crossed to England. It was, indeed, a straining after a social standard not quite within the reach of the ambitious provincial, which produced the conventionalism and dullness, noticed by British visitors in Canadian towns. In the smaller towns or villages where pretensions were fewer, and society accepted itself for that which it really was, there was much rude plenty and happiness. An Ayrshire settler writing in 1845, after an orthodox confession that Canada, like Scotland, "groaned under the curse of the Almighty," described his town, Cobourg, as a place where wages were higher and prices lower than at home. "A carpenter," he writes, "asks 6s. sterling for a day's work (without board), mason 8s., men working by the day at labourer's work 2s. and board, 4s. a day in harvest. Hired men by the month, 10 and 11 dollars in summer, and 7 and 8 in winter, and board. Women, 3 and 4 dollars per month, not much higher than at home. Provisions are cheaper here than at home. Wheat, 4s. per bushel; oats 1s. 3d. and 1s. 6d per bushel; potatoes, 1s. 6d.; beef and pork, 3d. and 4d. per {28} lb.; butter, 6d. per lb.; cheese, 6d.; tobacco, 1s. per lb.; whisky, 1s. 6d. per gallon; apples, 1s. 6d. per bushel; tea from 2s. 6d. to 4s., and sugar, 6d. per lb.... A man by honest industry here may live comfortably and support himself decently--I can, I know--and save something too. We live much better here than at home."[23] More especially in the smaller towns, the externals must have presented a steady and dull monotony--the jail and court-house, three or four churches, a varying number of mean-looking stores including a liberal proportion of taverns, and the irregular rows of private houses.