d. I shall also relate some
remarkable passages in this poor man's life which present an almost
unparalleled train of misfortune. I shall tell his dismal story, as
nearly as possible, in his own words.

The experience of life proves to a certainty, that some persons are
compelled to drink deeper of the cup of adversity than others, nay even
to drain it to the dregs.

We know that the Jews of old and the heathen world still suppose that
such are visited for their sins by the judgment of Heaven; but the
Divine Teacher has taught us better things, and warned us against such
rash conclusions, instructing us indeed that

"There surely is some guardian power
That rightly suffers wrong;
Gives vice to bloom its little hour,
But virtue late and long."

Poor G. was one of these unfortunate persons, whose melancholy history
I will now relate, in his own words.--He was, it seems, a native of
Ireland, from which country he emigrated soon after the last American
war, with his wife and two children, leaving three other children at
home with his father and mother, who were the proprietors of a small
estate in the county of Cork. He arrived safely with his family at the
Big Bay in Whitby (Windsor,) and purchased a lot of land close to the
lake-shore.

In those days, the emigrant's trials were indeed hard, compared with
what they are now. The country was quite unsettled, excepting that here
and there the nucleus of a small village appeared to vary its
loneliness, for the clearings were mostly confined to the vicinity of
the Great Lake. There were no plank, gravel, or macadamized roads then;
saw and grist-mills were few-and-far-between. It was no uncommon thing
then for a farmer to go thirty or forty miles to mill, which cause
indeed sometimes detained him a whole week from his family; and, even
more, if any accident had happened to the machinery. Besides this
inconvenience, he had to encounter risks for himself and his cattle,--
from bad bridges, deep mud-holes, and many other annoyances--I might
say, with truth, "too numerous to mention." The few farms in that
neighbourhood were then chiefly occupied by Americans, some of whom had
found it highly desirable to expatriate themselves; and might have
exclaimed with the celebrated pick-pocket, Barrington, in a prologue
spoken to a convict-audience in New South Wales,--

"Friends, be it understood,
We left our country for our country's good."

I have no intention of reflecti