“They were meant for my _private_ hours,” said Flora, laughing, as she collected the fallen articles, and stowed them once more into their hiding-place. “With _such_ the public has nothing to do.” “Well, if ever I marry, I’ll take good care to give away every old thing I have in the world. No wife of mine shall have it to say that she was forced to mend my rags.” “Wait till the time comes,” said Flora quietly. “You don’t know what may happen yet. There are more disagreeable things in every-day life than mending old clothes. Industry and perseverance may soon replace these with new ones; but it is useless to throw away old friends until we are sure of obtaining others as good.” Flora had often thought of this scene, and in her overflowing happiness had blessed God that she had been permitted to share Lyndsay’s poverty. Mending the old clothes had become a privilege. Thirty pounds was all that she could now afford to lay out upon herself and her little one. A small sum, indeed, to the rich, who would have expended as much in a single article of dress, but very large in her estimation, whose wants had always been regulated more by the wants of others than her own. Ignorant of the nature of the colony to which she was about to emigrate, and of the manners and customs of the people among whom she was to find a new home, and of whom she had formed the most laughable and erroneous notions, many of her purchases were not only useless, but ridiculous. Things were overlooked, which would have been of the greatest service; while others could have been procured in the colony for less than the expense of transportation. Twenty years ago, the idea of anything decent being required in a barbarous desert, such as the woods of Canada, was repudiated as nonsense. This reminds one of a gentleman who sent his son, a wild, extravagant, young fellow, with whom he could do nothing at home, to grow tame, and settle down into a quiet farmer in the Backwoods. The experiment proved, as it always does in such cases, a perfect failure. All parental restraint being removed, the young man ran wild altogether, and used his freedom as fresh occasion for licentiousness. The prudent father then wrote out to the gentleman to whose care the son had been consigned, that he had better buy him a wild farm, and a _negro and his wife_ to keep house for him. This, too, after the passing of the Anti-Slavery bill! But, even if slaves had been allowed in the colony, the horror of _colour_ is as great among the native-born Canadians as it is in the United States. So much did this otherwise clever man know of the colony to which he sent his unmanageable son!