When the acreage of meadow land and grain field had broadened beyond ready harvesting by the resident yeomen, swarms of Canadian laborers came flocking over the border in gangs of two or three, baggy-breeched and moccasined habitants, embarked in rude carts drawn by shaggy Canadian ponies. After a month or two of haymaking and harvesting, they jogged homeward with their earnings, whereunto were often added some small pilferings, for their fingers were as light as their hearts. This annual wave of inundation from the north ceased to flow with the general introduction of the mowing-machine; and the place in the meadow once held by the rank of habitants picturesque in garb, swinging their scythes in unison to some old song sung centuries ago in France, has been usurped by the utilitarian device that, with incessant chirr as of ten thousand sharded wings, mingling with the music of the bobolinks, sweeps down the broad acres of daisies, herdsgrass, and clover. Many Canadians returned with their families to live in the land which they had spied out in their summer incursions, and so in one way and another the influx continued till they have become the most numerous of Vermont's foreign population. For years the State was infested with an inferior class of these people, who plied the vocation of professional beggars. They made regular trips through the country in bands consisting of one or more families, with horses, carts, and rickety wagons, and a retinue of curs, soliciting alms of pork, potatoes, and breadstuffs at every farmhouse they came to, and pilfering when opportunity offered. In the large towns there were depots where the proceeds of their beggary and theft were disposed of. They were an abominable crew of vagabonds, robust, lazy men and boys, slatternly women with litters of filthy brats, and all as detestable as they were uninteresting. They worked their beats successfully, till their pitiful tales of sickness, burnings-out, and journeyings to friends in distant towns were worn threadbare, and then they gradually disappeared, no one knows whither.