The experience of life proves to a certainty, that some persons are compelled to drink deeper of the cup of adversity than others, nay even to drain it to the dregs. We know that the Jews of old and the heathen world still suppose that such are visited for their sins by the judgment of Heaven; but the Divine Teacher has taught us better things, and warned us against such rash conclusions, instructing us indeed that “There surely is some guardian power That rightly suffers wrong; Gives vice to bloom its little hour, But virtue late and long.” Poor G. was one of these unfortunate persons, whose melancholy history I will now relate, in his own words.—He was, it seems, a native of Ireland, from which country he emigrated soon after the last American war, with his wife and two children, leaving three other children at home with his father and mother, who were the proprietors of a small estate in the county of Cork. He arrived safely with his family at the Big Bay in Whitby (Windsor,) and purchased a lot of land close to the lake-shore. In those days, the emigrant’s trials were indeed hard, compared with what they are now. The country was quite unsettled, excepting that here and there the nucleus of a small village appeared to vary its loneliness, for the clearings were mostly confined to the vicinity of the Great Lake. There were no plank, gravel, or macadamized roads then; saw and grist-mills were few-and-far-between. It was no uncommon thing then for a farmer to go thirty or forty miles to mill, which cause indeed sometimes detained him a whole week from his family; and, even more, if any accident had happened to the machinery. Besides this inconvenience, he had to encounter risks for himself and his cattle,—from bad bridges, deep mud-holes, and many other annoyances—I might say, with truth, “too numerous to mention.” The few farms in that neighbourhood were then chiefly occupied by Americans, some of whom had found it highly desirable to expatriate themselves; and might have exclaimed with the celebrated pick-pocket, Barrington, in a prologue spoken to a convict-audience in New South Wales,— “Friends, be it understood, We left our country for our country’s good.” I have no intention of reflecting here on the national honour of the American nation; but it is a well-known fact, that many of the early frontier settlers were persons who had evaded the payment of their just debts or, perhaps, legal penalties for worse offences, by crossing the lines, and forming settlements in Canada. Such persons are not a fair specimen of American character. Individually, I have nothing to say against the Americans, but rather the contrary, for I have found them good and obliging neighbours.