The last time I went down to Kingston, there was a little girl in the cabin who rejoiced in the possession of a very large American doll, made so nearly to resemble an infant, that at a distance it was easy to mistake it for one. To render the deception more striking, you could make it cry like a child by pressing your hand upon its body. A thin, long-laced farmer's wife came on board, at the wharf we have just quitted, and it was amusing to watch her alternately gazing at the little girl and her doll. "Is that your baby, Cissy?" "No; it's my doll." "Mi! what a strange doll! Isn't that something _oncommon?_ I took it for a real child. Look at its bare feet and hands, and bald head. Well, I don't think it's 'zactly right to make a piece of wood look so like a human critter." The child good-naturedly put the doll into the woman's hands, who, happening to take it rather roughly, the wooden baby gave a loud squall; the woman's face expressed the utmost horror, and she dropped it on the floor as if it had been a hot coal. "Gracious, goodness me, the thing's alive!" The little girl laughed heartily, and, taking up the discarded doll, explained to the woman the simple method employed to produce the sound. "Well, it do sound quite _nataral_," said her astonished companion. "What will they find out next? It beats the railroad and the telegraph holler." "Ah, but I saw a big doll that could speak when I was with mamma in New York," said the child, with glistening eyes. "A doll that could speak? You don't say. Oh, do tell!" While the young lady described the automaton doll, it was amusing to watch the expressions of surprise, wonder, and curiosity, that flitted over the woman's brig cadaverous face. She would have made a good study for a painter. A young relative of mine went down in the steamboat, to be present at the Provincial Agricultural Show that was held that year in the town of Buckville, on the St. Lawrence. It was the latter end of September; the weather was wet and stormy, and the boat loaded to the water's edge with cattle and passengers. The promenade decks were filled up with pigs, sheep and oxen. Cows were looking sleepily in at the open doors of the ladies' cabin, and bulls were fastened on the upper deck. Such a motley group of bipeds and quadrupeds were never before huddled into such a narrow space; and, amidst all this din and confusion, a Scotch piper was playing lustily on the bagpipes, greatly to the edification, I've no doubt, of himself and the crowd of animal life around him.