Produced by Arthur Wendover and Andrew Sly Life in the Clearings versus the Bush by Mrs. Moodie Author of "Roughing it in the Bush," &c. "I sketch from Nature, and the draught is true. Whate'er the picture, whether grave or gay, Painful experience in a distant land Made it mine own." TO JOHN WEDDERBURN DUNBAR MOODIE, ESQ. SHERRIFF OF THE COUNTY OF HASTINGS, UPPER CANADA, THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED, BY HIS ATTACHED FRIEND AND WIFE, SUSANNA MOODIE Contents Introduction I Belleville II Local Improvements--Sketches of Society III Free Schools--Thoughts on Education IV Amusements V Trials of a Travelling Musician VI The Singing Master VII Camp Meetings VIII Wearing Mourning for the Dead IX Odd Characters X Grace Marks XI Michael Macbride XII Jeanie Burns XIII Lost Children XIV Toronto XV Lunatic Asylum XVI Provincial Agricultural Show XVII Niagara XVIII Goat Island XIX Conclusion INTRODUCTION "Dear foster-mother, on whose ample breast The hungry still find food, the weary rest; The child of want that treads thy happy shore, Shall feel the grasp of poverty no more; His honest toil meet recompense can claim, And Freedom bless him with a freeman's name!" S.M. In our work of "Roughing it in the Bush," I endeavoured to draw a picture of Canadian life, as I found it twenty years ago, in the Backwoods. My motive in giving such a melancholy narrative to the British public, was prompted by the hope of deterring well-educated people, about to settle in this colony, from entering upon a life for which they were totally unfitted by their previous pursuits and habits. To persons unaccustomed to hard labour, and used to the comforts and luxuries deemed indispensable to those moving in the middle classes at home, a settlement in the bush can offer few advantages. It has proved the ruin of hundreds and thousands who have ventured their all in this hazardous experiment; nor can I recollect a single family of the higher class, that have come under my own personal knowledge, that ever realised an independence, or bettered their condition, by taking up wild lands in remote localities; while volumes might be filled with failures, even more disastrous than our own, to prove the truth of my former statements.