Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago: Personal recollections and reminiscences of a sexagenarianHaight, Canniff
History
Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago: Personal recollections and reminiscences of a sexagenarian
Haight, Canniff
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Ontario -- Social life and customs
The houses and fields have changed, the woods have been pushed further
back, and it is no longer the home that is fixed in my memory. My visits
have consequently become less and less frequent. On one of these
occasions I felt a strong inclination one Sabbath morning to visit the
old Quaker Meeting House about three miles away. After making my
toilette and breakfasting, I sallied forth, on foot and alone, through
the fields and woods. The day was such as I would have selected from a
thousand. It was towards the last of May--a season wherein if a man's
heart fail to dance blithely, he must indeed be a victim of dulness. The
sun was moving upward in his diurnal course, and had just acquired
sufficient heat to render the shade of the wood desirable. The heaven
was cloudless, and soft languor rested on the face of nature, stealing
the mind's sympathy, and wooing it to the delights of repose. My mind
was too much occupied with early recollections to do more than barely
notice the splendour and the symphonies around me. The hum of the bee
and the beetle, as they winged their swift flight onwards, the song of
the robin and the meadow lark, as they tuned their throats to the
praises of the risen sun, and the crowing of some distant chanticleer,
moved lazily in the sluggish air. It was a season of general repose,
just such a day, I think, as a saint would choose to assist his fancy in
describing the sunny regions whither his thoughts delight to wander, or
a poet would select to refine his ideas of the climate of Elysium. At
length I arrived at the old meeting-house where I had often gone, when a
lad with my father and mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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