Happily, this seems the only thing she has to be sorry for. She and her husband have had difficulties, she admits when asked, but she brushes them lightly aside for cheerful topics. “Everyone has difficulties, of course,” says she, “but they were made to be got over.” And we can imagine how that spirit of hers smoothed the way over them. “Anyway,” she adds, “why worry about difficulties when there’s so much to be thankful for?” Her husband is one of her chief “things to be thankful for,” we discover at once. And where did he come from? Oh, his parents came out here from some corner of the old Austrian Empire, and settled next door to an Ontarian farmer with a Nova Scotian wife. These must have been the best kind of neighbors, for they treated the newcomers like brother and sister. Well, that Canadian couple, having a wealth of natural affection and no children to spend it on, had adopted three orphans, who were part English and part Scotch, with a dash of Irish; and our hostess was one of them. Her elder brother also had married into the Slavonic family. “And a good family they are,” she exclaims; “there’s none better; right-down good Canadians”—thanks largely to the “neighboring” they got when they first came in. We look at each other. One of our party smiles. “I’m what they call a pure Scot,” he says, “and never heard of a single ancestor who wasn’t. But if I could see a little farther back I know I should find Norsemen among my forbears, besides Celts, and the folk who held Scotland before the Celts came in, and fought them like Indians. To tell the truth, there’s no such thing as a ‘pure’ race in the world—or, if there is, it’s a poor one, too. I hadn’t thought of it before, but with such a threefold inheritance I’m thrice as rich as if I had only one.” “Then my children are richer still,” says the mother, laughing. “To be sure they are—a dozen times as rich; for every one of the races they inherit from is a blend in itself.” “And when neighbors ask what ‘race’ my children belong to,” the mother goes on, “I say I can’t guess a riddle—they belong to so many, and all good. But this I know, the children are what their father and mother are, just pure Canadian.” The mother is right. We need not and should not forget the roots from which we spring; we cannot pull up and burn those roots, if we wanted, and we should not want. Every cause for love and pride that we have in the lands of our past, we ought to cherish. Those who best remember the past and rightly value it are the least likely to forget their duty to the present and the future. Valuing our distant roots, we shall value more highly and love with more devotion the tree which has sprung from them, this many-rooted, many-gifted tree, the united brotherhood of the Canadian people.