Happy family! -- how pleasantly the evenings pass in your society! Gladly would I ride many miles to spend such pleasant hours, and witness happiness so unpretending and real. How cheerful looks that large room, with its glorious fire of Jarra-wood and black-boys, (for it is the winter season,) and how lightly those young girls move about, arranging the tea-table, and preparing for the evening meal! The kind-hearted mother, relieved of all duties but that of superintendence, sits by the fire chatting cheerfully with the guest, whose eyes, nevertheless, wander round the room after a certain light and dancing shape; the host, a man of eld, but stalwart in appearance, full of hospitality and noble courtesy, appears in his easy slippers and an old and well-worn coat, which formerly had seen service in London ball-rooms. He discourses not only of the crops and colonial politics, but of literature, and the last news from England; for like many other colonists he receives the English papers, and patronizes the 'Quarterly Review'. On the sofa lie the latest numbers of 'Punch' and 'the Illustrated London News' -- some four months old, of course -- for the ladies like fun and pictures, whilst their father laboriously wades through a three months' accumulation of the 'Times'. With what alacrity the old gentleman rises up and welcomes a traveller, who has unexpectedly arrived, and has just stabled his horse, and seen him fed before he made his appearance in the parlour! There is no beating about the bush for a bed, or an invitation to supper. Of the latter he is certain, and indifferent about the former; for having slept the last night under a tree, he feels sure of making himself comfortable on the sofa, or on the hearth-rug before the fire. And then the girls, who have no affectation or nonsense about them, crowd round the new-arrived, and ply him with questions about their young friends in other parts of the colony, and whether he was at the last ball at Government House, and what was most worn on that occasion -- until the good man, laughing, breaks through the circle, declaring he will answer no more questions till he has had his supper, and, it may be, a glass of whisky-toddy screeching hot.