farming and farm labour has advanced with the same rapid strides that everything else has done; and now one man can accomplish more in the same time, and do it better, than half a dozen could fifty years ago. Musical instruments were almost unknown except by name. A stray fiddler, as I have said elsewhere, was about the only musician that ever delighted the ear of young or old in those days. I do not know that there was a piano in the Province. If there were any their number was so small that they could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Now, every house in the land with any pretension to the ordinary comforts of life has either a piano or a melodeon, and every farmer's daughter of any position can run over the keys with as much ease and effect as a city belle. Passing along one of our streets not long since, I heard some one playing in a room adjoining a little grocery store. My attention was arrested by the skill of the player, and the fine tone of the instrument. While I was listening, a couple of ladies passed, one of whom said, "I do wonder if they have got a piano here." "Why not," said the other, "the pea-nut-man on ---- Street has one, and I don't see why every one else shouldn't have." I think all who have marked the changes that have taken place during the half century which is gone, will admit that we are a much faster people than our fathers were. We have jumped from change to change with marvellous rapidity. We could never endure the patient plodding way they travelled, nor the toil and privation they went through; and it is a good thing for us, perhaps, that they preceded us. Would it not be well for us occasionally to step aside from the bustle and haste which surrounds us, and look back. There are many valuable lessons to be gathered from the pages of the past, and it might be well, perhaps, were we to temper our anxiety to rise in the social scale with some of the sterling qualities that characterized our progenitors. Our smart boys now-a-days are far too clever to pursue the paths which their fathers trod, and in too many cases begin the career of life as second or third- rate professional men or merchants, while our daughters are too frequently turned into ornaments for the parlour. We know that fifty years ago the boys had to work early and late. West of England broadcloths and fine French fabrics were things that rarely, indeed, adorned their persons. Fashionable tailors and young gentlemen, according to the present acceptation of the term, are comparatively modern institutions in Canada. Fancy for a moment one of our young swells, with his fashionable suit, gold watch, chain, and rings, patent leather boots and kid gloves, and topped off with Christie's latest headgear, driving up to grandfather's door in a covered buggy and plated harness, fifty years ago! What would have been said, think you? My impression is that his astonishment would have been too great to find expression.