Life in the Clearings versus the BushMoodie, Susanna
History
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
Moodie, Susanna
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Moodie, Susannah, 1803-1885; Ontario -- Description and travel
Age in Canada is seldom honoured. You would imagine it almost a crime
for any one to grow old--with such slighting, cold indifference are the
aged treated by the young and strong. It is not unusual to hear a lad
speak of his father, perhaps, in the prime of life, as the "old fellow,"
the "old boy," and to address a grey-haired man in this disrespectful
and familiar manner. This may not be apparent to the natives themselves,
but it never fails to strike every stranger that visits the colony.
To be a servant is a lot sufficiently hard--to have all your actions
dictated to you by the will of another--to enjoy no rest or recreation,
but such as is granted as a very great favour; but to be a humble
dependent in old age on children, to whom all the best years of your
life were devoted with all the energy of maternal love, must be sad
indeed. But they submit with great apparent cheerfulness, and seem to
think it necessary to work for the shelter of a child's roof, and the
bread they eat.
The improved circumstances of families, whose parents, in the first
settlement of the country, had to work very hard for their general
maintenance, may be the cause of this inversion of moral duties, and
the parents not being considered properly on an equality with their
better dressed and better educated offspring; but from whatever cause
it springs, the effect it produces on the mind of a stranger is very
painful. It is difficult to feel much respect for any one who looks down
upon father or mother as an inferior being, and, as such, considers them
better qualified to perform the coarse drudgeries of life. Time, we
hope, will remedy this evil, with many others of the same class.
There was a bride, too, on board--a very delicate looking young woman,
who was returning from a tour in the States to her native village. She
seemed very much to dread the ordeal she had yet to pass through--in
sitting dressed up for a whole week to receive visitors. Nor did I in
the least wonder at her repugnance to go through this trying piece of
ceremonial, which is absolutely indispensable in Canada.
The Monday after the bride and bridegroom make their first appearance at
church, every person in the same class prepares to pay them a visit of
congratulation; and if the town is large, and the parties well known,
the making of visits to the bride lasts to the end of the week.
The bride, who is often a young girl from sixteen to twenty years of
age, is doomed for this period to sit upon a sofa or reclined in an easy
chair, dressed in the most expensive manner, to receive her guests.
Well she knows that herself, her dress, the furniture of her room, even
her cake and wine, will undergo the most minute scrutiny, and be the
theme of conversation among all the gossips of the place for the next
nine days. No wonder that she feels nervous, and that her manners are
constrained, and that nothing looks easy or natural about her, from her
neck-ribbon to her shoe-tie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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