“And the absence of horrid black stumps!” rejoined I. “Yes; and the absence of horrid stumps! Depend upon it, my dear, your Canadian farm will seem to you a perfect paradise by the time it is all under cultivation; and you will look upon it with the more pleasure and pride from the consciousness that it was once a forest wild, which, by the effects of industry and well-applied means, has changed to fruitful fields. Every fresh comfort you realise around you will add to your happiness; every improvement within doors or without will raise a sensation of gratitude and delight in your mind, to which those that revel in the habitual enjoyment of luxury, and even of the commonest advantages of civilization, must in a great degree be strangers. My pass-words are—‘Hope, resolution, and perseverance!’” “This,” said my husband, “is true philosophy; and the more forcible, because you not only recommend the maxim, but practise it also.” I had reckoned much on the Indian summer, of which I had read such delightful descriptions; but I must say it has fallen far below my expectations. Just at the commencement of this month (November) we experienced three or four warm hazy days, that proved rather close and oppressive. The sun looked red through the misty atmosphere, tinging the fantastic clouds that hung in smoky volumes with saffron and pale crimson light, much as I have seen the clouds above London look on a warm sultry spring morning. Not a breeze ruffled the waters, not a leaf (for the leaves had not entirely fallen) moved. This perfect stagnation of the air was suddenly changed by a hurricane of wind and snow that came on without any previous warning. I was standing near a group of tall pines, that had been left in the middle of a clearing, collecting some beautiful crimson lichens, S—— not being many paces distant, with his oxen drawing firewood: suddenly we heard a distant hollow rushing sound, that momentarily increased, the air around us being yet perfectly calm; I looked up, and beheld the clouds, hitherto so motionless, moving with amazing rapidity in several different directions. A dense gloom overspread the heavens. S——, who had been busily engaged with the cattle, had not noticed my being so near, and now called to me to use all the speed I could to gain the house, or an open part of the clearing, distant from the pine-trees. Instinctively I turned towards the house, while the thundering shock of trees falling in all directions at the edge of the forest, the rending of the branches from the pines I had just quitted, and the rush of the whirlwind sweeping down the lake, made me sensible of the danger with which I had been threatened.