Far different from the mill-girls and engineers of Port Dundas was the passing population in these dusty streets. Elderly merchantmen, with ease and competence in every fold of their spotless broadcloth--young ones exuberant and unclouded, casting off the yoke of business as lightly, out of the office, as they bore it sensibly within, met Martha at every step. Here come some, fresh from the Exchange. You can see they are discussing speculations, calculating elaborate chances, perhaps “in the way of business,” hazarding a princely fortune, which may be doubled or dissolved before another year. And a group of young men meet them, louder and more demonstrative, circling round one who is clearly the object of interest to all. Why?--he is going out to India to-morrow to make his fortune--and save that it gives him a little importance, and makes him the lion of the day, envied by all his compeers, this youth, who is flushed just now with a little excitement, in reality feels no more about his Indian voyage, than if it were but a summer expedition to the Gairloch, or Roseneath Bay; and is much more comfortably assured of making his fortune, than he would be of bringing home a creditable amount of trout, if the event of to-morrow was a day’s fishing, instead of the beginning of an eventful life. Of the youths round him, one will be the representative partner of his “house” in far America before the year is out; another will feed wool in the bush; another learn to adorn his active northern life, with oriental pomps and luxuries by the blue waves of the Bosphorus. And among them all there is a certain fresh confident unconscious life, which, so far as it goes, carries you with it in sympathy. It is not refined, it is not profound, it has little elevation and little depth; but withal it has such a fresh breeze about it, such a continual unceasing motion, such an undoubting confidence in its own success, that this simplicity of worldliness moves you as if it were something nobler. Not true enough, nor great enough to call the solemn “God speed” out of your heart; yet you cannot choose, but wish the young adventurers well. And there are clerks more hurried; young men with quick business-step and eye, whose sons shall be merchants’ sons, as carelessly prosperous as are the young masters in the office now; but some who will live and die poor clerks, yet who will have their share of enjoyed life as well, and end their days as pleasantly, pass and repass among the crowd. Some, too, who will sink and fall, who will break hearts, and give fair hopes the death-blow. So much young life--so many souls, each to make its own existence for itself, and not another. There come solemn thoughts into the mind which looks on such a scene.