WHAT OUR EARLY SETTLERS HAD TO GO THROUGH--HOW THEY GOT THROUGH IT AND CAME OUT AT THE TOP OF THE HEAP. THEIR BRAVE BATTLE FOR INDEPENDENCE--THEIR BOUNTIFUL REWARD. "It's na' to hide it in a hedge; It's na' for train attendant; But for the glorious privilege Of being independent." Thus sung Robert Burns long ago in praise of independence. This is one of the rewards which the land holds out to the honest, hard-working, persevering settler; and never does it break its promise to industry and perseverance. In the city, dangers surround the poor laboring man; temptations arise on every side to drag him down; insurmountable barriers oppose his advancement. Well, he may avoid the dangers--we wish to give the best view of the case, and, thank God, there are thousands of instances to sustain it--spurn the temptations, and even surmount some of the outward barriers to his advancement. He may be respectably housed and clothed; he may have a good boss. Ah, there is the rub, good or bad-- HE HAS A BOSS, a man at whose nod he must come and go. He may have money in a savings bank honestly managed; but if a spell of sickness prostrates him, how much of his hard-earned savings will be left when he rises from his sick bed? And suppose he feels that he has his death sickness, can you, by going into sorrow's counting-house, attempt to estimate the agony of the poor Catholic parent when he thinks of the fate which may await his children, left fatherless in a sinful city? There are other pictures of a poor man's city life, which we care not to draw. But we will take this prosperous workingman, with a good boss, from the city, and place him in his first rude house on his own land. He misses many things, many comforts. He misses the society of friends who used to come round from time to time--the milkman's bell, the butcher's cart: everything was so handy in the city. He is lonely: a feeling of desolation comes over him as he stands at the door of his new home, and looks around at the unimproved land. The land is rich and good, and the scene is fair to look at; but the reality is so different from the mental picture he made before setting out for the West, that he feels sad and disappointed. Then as he looks around him _at his own_, HE MISSES THE BOSS. At the thought, the spirit of independence which has led this man thousands of miles, perhaps, to seek a new home, and which sadness and disappointment--the first effects of a great change--for awhile subdued, leaps in his heart, and sends the red blood surging through his veins. NO BOSS. His eyes grow bright with pride as he looks out upon the land, a wide circle of which he calls his own. THE BOSS HAS DISAPPEARED, And the man, the owner of a wide stretch of real estate, conscious of a great awaking of self-respect in his being, stands erect at the door of his own house, on his own property, and feels that no one better than he is, shall pass him by all day.