annually paid by the people of Oshawa, voluntarily and spontaneously. Again I say, taking Oshawa as an index of the Province, one can begin to form some idea of the vast sum annually contributed for these purposes. Verily, there are no more generous people on this globe, This $8 per head is almost equal to the annual drink bill of the greatest drinking nations of the world. But then, of course, one must expect, unfortunately, that men will pay more for vices, taking the world at large, than they will for commendable objects. Ontario comes perhaps quite as near paying as much per head for commendable objects as for vicious ones as any people existing to-day. Hence, one can form no other opinion than that Ontarioans are really as moral, as well educated and thrifty, and as generous a people as there are anywhere to be found. * * * * * People of the Old World cannot realize the conditions of life in America, the peculiar freedom of pleasant informal intercourse common to it, without reading closely or unless they come and see us. The following incidents of a railway journey will serve for illustration. Remember that Upper Canada is covered by a very extensive network of railways, hence such scenes are always possible. An old gentleman in passing from the smoking-car to the first-class coach behind, while the train was under full speed of forty miles an hour or so, had in some way been thrown or blown or jolted from the platform to the ground. He is injured somewhat badly, but not seriously. In obedience to a telegram an ambulance of the city of Toronto meets the incoming train at the Union Depot, and the injured man is gently raised in a huge blanket from the baggage car, where he had been placed after his fall, and deposited in the ambulance. A doctor gets in and sits by his head. A crowd has gathered, and, seeking to know what the trouble is, I make enquiry of a man standing near me. The man, whose sable complexion plainly betokens his African origin, without any visible admixture of white blood, courteously replies:--“Don’t exazactly know, sah, but ’spects some man fell off de kears.” And the ambulance slowly moves off to the hospital. Reaching my train, I deposit my things in the first-class coach and make for the “smoker.” About one-half of all the gentlemen do likewise. My observation is that about one-half of all Canadians, taking them “by the large,” as the sailors say, burn the fragrant weed. In Britain three-fourths would, I think, be the proportion; in Holland and Belgium _eleven-tenths_ is, I imagine, almost within the mark. If our medical men can convince us that Sir Walter Raleigh’s tobacco is decimating the human family, we may safely conclude that three-fourths of Canadians will soon pass over to the great silent majority. Well, if our medical men were to tell us so, I don’t believe we would accept their _ipse dixit_--at any rate, we would go on smoking, regardless of consequences.