This is a faithful picture of life as I saw it in a remote Ontario village--a village too mean to pay a single dollar to get a railway, and which therefore was beaten in the race. The tedium of a winter’s life therein, snow-bound and with its humdrum, is not an experience to be coveted. If you like the picture, you can find such a place for a winter’s residence next winter, easily; but I fancy most readers will agree with me in saying that the deacon, the fore-handed citizens and the village generally made a serious mistake in not securing railway communication when it was to be had. Villages, as well as citizens, to keep up in the race nowadays, must be alive and moving, or both are soon left far behind by their neighbors’ ambitions. SOME FAMILY HISTORY. There came to the Whitbies from one of the Midland counties of England a bachelor accompanied by his widowed sister and her little girl. Possessing capital, he bought one of the best farms of these favored townships. It was a glebe of about one hundred and fifty acres, without any waste land within its borders, and was nicely built upon. Here the bachelor brother farmed thoroughly and well, while the sister presided over the household and looked after the education and care of her growing daughter. Of their former history no one knew aught. The man was a jolly good fellow, open-handed, free and hospitable. They used to say that no visitor ever came to the home and went away dry unless he chose to. Not that I mean to say this English gentleman bachelor was a drinker, only that, according to the light of those days, the rites of hospitality were administered when the tankard kept pace with the choicest dishes of the table. There are probably few living now who were alive and partakers of this bachelor’s kindnesses. The farm was bought in the late forties, and he and his sister left it for their English home once more about 1863.