In the abstract it seems unfair and uncalled for that a township had to pay for the railway in advance in order to get it to touch that township, and then, when it came, be charged stiff freight and passenger rates by the same grateful railway. It was “a bitter pill to swallow,” but it had to be taken. Those municipalities which did not “swallow the pill” are to-day “in the lurch,” as we say in Canada. I paid one of them a visit a little time ago, and I give herewith a sketch of my experiences: The long, uninterrupted winter was dragging its slow length along without a break. Even the January thaw, as always foretold by the oldest inhabitant, had not come to the hamlet during that winter. Snow fell once or twice during the week with unerring regularity. Roadways had been beaten and tracked in the snow, and the faithful villagers had tramped through it from day to day. Nothing, in fact, had happened to break the monotony of this quiet village hamlet for the entire winter season. Perhaps the last noted occurrence was just as the snow came, when the deacon’s horse ran away and came bounding back into the village without the deacon or anyone else holding the lines, and the robes partly in and partly out of the cutter. That occurrence for a time had been food for gossip among the quiet villagers, some stoutly averring that the deacon was drunk, while others, putting it mildly, said, “The deacon was took bad in his head suddenly, as he sometimes was wont to be, and couldn’t guide his horse.” Just how it was was still a mooted point, even as late as the dreaded Ides of March--the time of my visit to this quiet place. It seems no one had died, there were but few births, and only one or two young fellows had spunk enough to do any right-down earnest courting for the whole live-long stormy winter. Happenings there were none. Well, business called me to this little rural hamlet in the gusty month of March--this peaceful village, removed from the path of the iron horse, an out-of-the way place altogether. During the general upheaval of things in Ontario, when most towns and villages were up and about to secure railway communication, the deacon of this little place and a few other fore-handed citizens strongly objected to giving “any bonus for any number of railways, be they one or more,” so the village has gone without a railway. Excellent people they are indeed, and they change so very slowly and deliberately that old Rip Van Winkle could not possibly have found a better place wherein or whereabout to take that long memorable nap of his.