a better water supply, it remained practically in darkness
during the winter nights, through the lapsing in 1836 of its earlier
municipal organization.[21] Strangers were said to find the provincial
self-importance of its inhabitants irritating. At the other extreme of
the province, Mrs. Jameson found fault with the citizens of Toronto for
their social conventionalism. "I did not expect to find here," she
wrote, "in the new capital of a new country, with the boundless forests
within half a mile of us on almost every side, concentrated as it were,
the worst evils of our old and most artificial social system at home,
with none of its _agremens_, and none of its advantages. Toronto is
like a fourth or fifth rate provincial town with the pretensions of a
capital city."[22]

Everywhere, if contemporary prints of the cities may be taken as
evidence, the military element was very prominent, and the tone was
distinctly English. The leaders of society looked {27} to London for
their fashions, and men like John Beverley Robinson moved naturally, if
a little stiffly, in the best English circles when they crossed to
England. It was, indeed, a straining after a social standard not quite
within the reach of the ambitious provincial, which produced the
conventionalism and dullness, noticed by British visitors in Canadian
towns.

In the smaller towns or villages where pretensions were fewer, and
society accepted itself for that which it really was, there was much
rude plenty and happiness. An Ayrshire settler writing in 1845, after
an orthodox confession that Canada, like Scotland, "groaned under the
curse of the Almighty," described his town, Cobourg, as a place where
wages were higher and prices lower than at home. "A carpenter," he
writes, "asks 6s. sterling for a day's work (without board), mason 8s.,
men working by the day at labourer's work 2s. and board, 4s. a day in
harvest. Hired men by the month, 10 and 11 dollars in summer, and 7
and 8 in winter, and board. Women, 3 and 4 dollars per month, not much
higher than at home. Provisions are cheaper here than at home. Wheat,
4s. per bushel; oats 1s. 3d. and 1s. 6d per bushel; potatoes, 1s. 6d.;
beef and pork, 3d. and 4d. per {28} lb.; butter, 6d. per lb.; cheese,
6d.; tobacco, 1s. per lb.; whisky, 1s. 6d. per gallon; apples, 1s. 6d.
per bushel; tea from 2s. 6d. to 4s., and sugar, 6d. per lb.... A man
by honest industry here may live comfortably and support himself
de