In another of these settlements,--it was remote, then, though now it has a great line of railway running through it,--things used to be carried to an extreme just the opposite of that above noticed. It was a little English colony, several of the members of which were persons of tolerably good means, with influential family connections at home. Engaged, mostly, in agricultural pursuits, they could chop down trees, and drive oxen, and plough, and mow, as well as any lout in the country round, and some of them built their own houses and made furniture for them. They had been swells, though, before they became "hawbucks," and they brought some of their standard manners and customs with them. It was considered proper in this community to dine at the fashionable hour of six, when every person was expected to be precise in the matter of costume,--the ladies _décolletées_ to the admissible extent, and the gentlemen in black dress-coats and white "chokers." The necessity of supporting the position suggested by this attempt at style, though, induced extravagance. Many of the swells became bankrupt. Their farms passed into more homespun hands. Their black dress-coats have long since become rusty and out of the mode, and the mortiferous whiskey of the country now tantalizes such of them as it has not killed with melancholy remembrances of the Burgundy that was. The simple faith and primitive arrangements that existed in some of these clearings before the advent of the iron horse were peculiarities that never failed to impress visitors from far-off cities and settlements of older growth. Bolts and bars were the last things that a settler would think about, when fitting up his house. A man would leave his rifle in the canoe, upon the river's bank, for days together, without the least misgiving as to its being spirited away. Rust would not touch it, the climate of Western Canada being singularly free from moisture; and the roving Indians who traversed these woods were dependent in a great measure upon the white man, and had learned to look upon his property with respect. Looking over one of my note-books, I recall the picture of a deserted old shanty that stood in a meadow by the margin of a bright and swift river. The gentleman who had formerly occupied this weather-stained hut had built himself a larger and more ambitious mansion upon the opposite bank of the stream. For some time after he had moved into this, the interior of the house remained in an unfinished state, and he had no accommodation for his books. Of these he had a choice collection, and they were left in their large wooden cases, for two years or so, on the upper floor of the old shanty, the doors of which had already parted from their hinges, and the windows yielded to the autumnal blasts. To this most curious of circulating libraries the owner accorded free access to the few neighbors who occupied the clearings around. Many a time I have swung myself up by the crazy ladder