Getting up before daybreak next morning, my father raked over the embers of the buried back log of the big fire-place and quickly had a blaze. Happening to glance out of the window, to his intense amazement he saw, as he said, “the whole sky filled with shooting stars.” Quickly he called to the men, his hired help in the lumbering business, to come down stairs. They needed not a second invitation, and among them was one Shields, who, on reaching the door, dropped in a twinkling upon his knees and began to pray. The balls of fire continuing, his prayers grew more earnest, if vigor of voice could be any index to his religious fervor. Of the grandeur of the unparalleled scene my father said almost nothing, for I am led to think they were all too thoroughly frightened to think of beauty, that being a side issue entirely. The fiery shower growing more dense, my father went out of doors and found the fire-balls did not burn or hurt. Then he went to a neighbor’s--a preacher of renown in the locality--having to pass through woods, and even in the darkness, he affirms, the fire-balls lighted his way quite distinctly. The preacher, already awake, was seated at the table beside a tallow dip reading his Bible, with two other neighbors listening and too frightened, he said, to even bid him good morning. He sat and listened to verse after verse, and still the stars fell. The preacher gave no explanation or sign, but read on. Looking eastward, at last my father saw a faint glimmer of breaking day. Once more he came out into the fire and made his way homeward. Before he reached there daylight broke. Gradually the fire-balls grew less and less, and, with the day, ceased altogether. To find a sign of them he hunted closely upon the ground, but not a trace was left of anything. Nor was any damage done. What became of the stars that fell he could not conjecture. Realize that in 1833 astronomers had not taught Upper Canadians in regard to meteoric showers, as we know to-day, and we do not marvel at their consternation and fright. Such was the greatest meteoric shower the world probably has ever known. Its greatest density was said to be attained in this section of the continent. A bit of doggerel went the rounds at that time. It was made, I believe, by one Horace Hutchinson, a sailor whom my father had on one of his schooners. Here is the first verse: “I well remembered what I see In eighteen hundred and thirty-three, When from the affrighted place I stood The stars forsook their fixed abode.” A better sailor he was than a poet, and yet, bad as the verses were, they were very popular in the thirties in a large section of the Home District, of which this is a part. E. S. Shrapnel, the artist, paints the picture (page 144) from an actual photograph of the house, he obviously supplying the kneeling man.