minds such principles as shall shine out
in conversation or acts. Now were an ordinary social winter evening
party tested by such principles, what would a candid spectator judge to
have been the principal topics of reading or study? I remember once, in
my earlier years, to have passed an evening in a room where a number of
my intimate friends were engaged in playing at cards. As I did not play,
I took my seat at an office-table, and hastily sketched the conversation
which I afterwards read for their amusement. But the whole was in
reality a bitter satire on their language and sentiments, although it
was not so designed by me, nor received by them. I several years
afterwards saw the sketch of this conversation among my papers, and was
forcibly struck with this reflection.

Let me revert to some of the topics of conversation introduced in the
circles where I have visited this day, or in my own room. It is
Goldsmith, I think, who says that our thoughts take their tinge from
contiguous objects. A man standing near a volcano would naturally speak
of burning mountains. A person traversing a field of snow would feel his
thoughts occupied with polar scenes. Thus are we here thrown together.
Ice, snow, winds, a high range of the thermometer, or a driving tempest,
are the almost ever present topics of remark: and these came in for a
due share of the conversation to-day. The probability of the ice in the
river's breaking up the _latter part of April_, and the arrival of a
vessel at the post _early in May!_--the dissolution of the seventeenth
Congress, which must take place on the 4th of March, the character and
administration of Governor Clinton (which were eulogized), were
adverted to.

In the evening I went, by invitation, to Mr. Siveright's at the North
West House. The party was numerous, embracing most of the officers of
the American garrison, John Johnston, Esq., Mr. C.O. Ermatinger, a
resident who has accumulated a considerable property in trade, and
others. Conversation turned, as might have been expected, upon the topic
of the Fur Trade, and the enterprising men who established, or led to
the establishment of, the North West Company. Todd, Mackenzie, and
M'Gillvray were respectively described. Todd was a merchant of Montreal,
an Irishman by birth, who possessed enterprise, courage, address, and
general information. He paved the way for the establishment of the
Company, and was one of the first partners, but died untimely.