ot listened to, and they were married.

"A few months after the marriage, Mr. Corklin went in a log canoe to the
head of the bay, on business, and was to return the next day; but day
after day passed, and no Mr. Corklin appeared. At last the poor wife's
anxiety became so great that a messenger was sent in search of him. He
had been at Dr. Proyer's, but left the day he was expected home. The
alarm was given, and search commenced along the lake shore. They found
his canoe drifted on shore, laden with game, vegetables and a few
apples, his hat, and an empty bottle that smelt of rum; but he was gone.
They supposed that he had fallen overboard without upsetting the canoe.
His body they could not find for days after, and his wife used to wander
along the lake shore, from early dawn until dark, with the hope that she
might find his body. One day she saw a number of birds on a drift log
that was half out of the water. By the side of this log lay the remains
of her husband. The eagles had picked his eyes out, but had only
commenced their feast. This was the first death in the settlement. My
father took back the lot, paid for the frame house, kept his smith's
tools, and so ended his town.

"Upon more mature reflection, he decided that the neighbourhood of a
small town would be the reverse of agreeable, as the first inhabitants
would be those that were too idle to improve a farm for themselves, and
bad habits are generally the attendants of idleness, and that he, in
place of being the owner of all, would only be proprietor in common with
all the idle and dissipated of a new country.

"On my father's arrival in the country he had been sworn in a justice of
the peace for the London and Western districts--a very extensive
jurisdiction over wild lands with few inhabitants; for those districts
embraced all the lands between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, the Grand
River, and Rivers Detroit and St. Clair. Courts were held at Sandwich, a
distance of nearly two hundred miles, without roads, so that magistrates
had to settle all disputes as they best could, perform all marriages,
bury the dead, and prescribe for the sick. In addition to the medicine
chest, my father purchased a pair of tooth-drawers, and learned to draw
teeth, to the great relief of the suffering. So popular did he become in
that way, that in after years they used to entreat him to draw their
teeth in preference to a medical man--the one did it gratuitously, the
other, of cou