ed became an interesting local
characteristic. Mr. Hiram Holt was the son of an English settler, who
had fixed himself on the left bank of the Ottawa, amid what was then
primeval forest, and was now a flourishing township, covered with
prosperous farms and villages. Here had the sturdy Saxon struggled with,
and finally conquered, adverse circumstances, leaving his eldest son
possessed of a small freehold estate, and his other children portioned
comfortably, so that much of the neighbourhood was peopled by his
descendants. And this, Hiram's first visit to the mother country--for
he was Canadian born--was on colonial business, being deputed from his
section of the province, along with others, to give evidence, as a
landed proprietor, before the Secretary of State, whose gate-lodge
his father would have been proud to keep when he was a poor Suffolk
labourer.

'Now there's an injustice,' quoth Mr. Holt, diverging into politics.
'England has forty-three colonies, and but one man to oversee them
all--a man that's jerked in and out of office with every successive
Ministry, and is almost necessarily more intent on party manoeuvres
than on the welfare of the young nations he rules. Our colony alone--the
two Canadas--is bigger than Great Britain and Ireland three times over.
Take in all along Vancouver's Island, and it's as big as Europe.
_There's_ a pretty considerable slice of the globe for one man to
manage! But forty-two other colonies have to be managed as well;
and I guess a nursery of forty-three children of all ages left to
one care-taker would run pretty wild, I do.'

'Yet we never hear of mismanagement,' observed Robert, in an unlucky
moment; for Mr. Hiram Holt retained all the Briton's prerogative of
grumbling, and in five minutes had rehearsed a whole catalogue of
colonial grievances very energetically.

'Then I suppose you'll be for joining the stars and stripes?' said the
young man.

'Never!' exclaimed the settler. 'Never, while there's a rag of the union
jack to run up. But it's getting late;' and as he rose to his feet with
a tremendous yawn, Robert perceived his great length, hitherto concealed
by the table on which he leaned. 'This life would kill me in six months.
In my own place I'm about the farm at sunrise in summer. Never knew
what it was to be sick, young man.' And so the party separated; Robert
admiring the stalwart muscular frame of the Canadian as he strode before
him up the stairs towards their sl