An old farmer ascribed the degeneracy of the times not to influences broad as Arnold’s, but to the “flattery” understood in the difference of manner toward farmers’ wives. “When ’twere dame and porridge, it were rale good times; when ’twere mistress and broth, ’twere worser a great deal; but when it comes to be ma’am and soup, it be werry bad indeed,” and no wonder the country went to the dogs. He preferred the days when U. E. Loyalist ladies speared salmon with pitchforks. If dress had aught to do with it, the change there was great indeed. In the early days to which he alluded many a U. E. Loyalist belle had only one garment to her name, a deerskin slip, and men’s buckskin trousers sometimes brought a dollar and a half after twelve years’ wear; by ’37 the following is a description of an evening dress, thought worthy to be sent to Canada--“Gros royale black ground with flowing pattern, wide flounces and short tight sleeves, long gloves of _peau rosée_, English lace cap with pompous (?) roses, English lace handkerchief, black satin shoes, and one bracelet.” During the good old days so bemoaned by the farmer, one U. E. Loyalist girl unfortunately made a neighbourly visit where she saw the mysteries of the laundry for the first time. The lesson sank deep in her mind, and at the first opportunity after her return home, when the rest of the family had left her in undisturbed possession of the house, she made her maiden attempt as blanchiseuse on her own deerskin garment. But as this adaptation from Godiva laboured, the garment grew less and less. Any woman who has attempted to wash a glove wrung into a wisp can appreciate her horror. There was no Peeping Tom, but the sounds of the returning family precipitated her into the generous shadow of the potato-hole, whence she interviewed them--if, indeed, the attenuated bit of chamois was not the more eloquent of the two. I’ll find a thousand shifts to get away, has been written; alas, she could find not one. She was packed in a barrel and conveyed upon an ox-sled to a neighbour’s where clothes were more common, and the distressed and shiftless maiden could truly have said she was in her right mind when again clothed. The last of the English and the first of the Canadians were in some points uncommonly alike. * * * * * “In our house in my childhood everything was dated by 1812--things had importance only as they were affected by that year and whether they were ‘before’ or ‘after’. My father was through the whole of ’12 and was with Brock at the taking of Detroit; Brock gave him a horse and all trappings for it and himself, and I very well remember the bearskin holsters and the pistols--enormous pistols that we often shot off when we were little.