"You are wrong, Sir; it is not so"--"Mamma, that is not true; I know better," are expressions which I have heard with painful surprise from young people in this country; and the parents have sunk into silence, evidently abashed at the reproof of an insolent child. These remarks are made with no ill-will, but with a sincere hope that they may prove beneficial to the community at large, and be the means of removing some of the evils which are to be found in our otherwise pleasant and rapidly-improving society. I know that it would be easier for me to gain the approbation of the Canadian public, by exaggerating the advantages to be derived from a settlement in the colony, by praising all the good qualities of her people, and by throwing a flattering veil over their defects; but this is not my object, and such servile adulation would do them no good, and degrade me in my own eyes. I have written what I consider to be the truth, and as such I hope it may do good, by preparing the minds of emigrants for what they will _really find_, rather than by holding out fallacious hopes that can never be realized. In "Roughing it in the Bush," I gave an honest personal statement of _facts_. I related nothing but what had really happened; and if illustrations were wanting of persons who had suffered _as much_, and been reduced to the same straits, I could furnish a dozen volumes without having to travel many hundred miles for subjects. We worked hard and struggled manfully with overwhelming difficulties, yet I have been abused most unjustly by the Canadian papers for revealing some of the mysteries of the Backwoods. Not one word was said _against the country_ in my book, as was falsely asserted. It was written as a warning to well-educated persons not to settle in localities for which they were unfitted by their _previous habits and education_. In this I hoped to confer a service both on them and Canada; for the _prosperous_ settlement of such persons on cleared farms must prove more beneficial to the colony than their _ruin in the bush_. It was likewise very cruelly and falsely asserted, that I had spoken ill of the _Irish people_, because I described the revolting scene we witnessed at Grosse Isle, the actors in which were principally Irish emigrants of the _very lowest class_. Had I been able to give the whole details of what we saw on that island, the terms applied to the people who furnished such disgusting pictures would have been echoed by their own countrymen. This was one of those cases in which it was _impossible_ to reveal the _whole truth_.