he had formed the most laughable and erroneous
notions, many of her purchases were not only useless, but ridiculous.
Things were overlooked, which would have been of the greatest service;
while others could have been procured in the colony for less than the
expense of transportation.

Twenty years ago, the idea of anything decent being required in a
barbarous desert, such as the woods of Canada, was repudiated as
nonsense.

This reminds one of a gentleman who sent his son, a wild, extravagant,
young fellow, with whom he could do nothing at home, to grow tame, and
settle down into a quiet farmer in the Backwoods. The experiment proved,
as it always does in such cases, a perfect failure. All parental
restraint being removed, the young man ran wild altogether, and used his
freedom as fresh occasion for licentiousness. The prudent father then
wrote out to the gentleman to whose care the son had been consigned,
that he had better buy him a wild farm, and a _negro and his wife_ to
keep house for him.

This, too, after the passing of the Anti-Slavery bill! But, even if
slaves had been allowed in the colony, the horror of _colour_ is as
great among the native-born Canadians as it is in the United States. So
much did this otherwise clever man know of the colony to which he sent
his unmanageable son!

Flora had been led to imagine that settlers in the Backwoods lived
twenty or thirty miles apart, and subsisted upon game and the wild
fruits of the country until their own lands were brought into a state of
cultivation. Common sense and reflection would have pointed this out as
impossible; but common sense is very rare, and the majority of persons
seldom take the trouble to think. We have known many persons just as
wise as Flora in this respect. It is a fact, however, that Flora
believed these reports, and fancied that her lot would be cast in one of
those remote settlements, where no sounds of human life were to meet her
ears, and the ringing of her husband's axe alone awake the echoes of the
forest.

She had yet to learn, that the proximity of fellow-labourers in the
great work of clearing is indispensable; that man cannot work alone in
the wilderness, where his best efforts require the aid of his
fellow-men.

The oft-repeated assertion, that _anything would do for Canada_, was
the cause of more blunders in the choice of an outfit, than the most
exaggerated statements in its praise.

Of the fine towns and villages, and t