r the times
gone by, and consider the increasing settlement of the country as their
worst evil; wilfully closing their eyes against improvement, they see
not the wide fields, waving fair with grass and wheat, but think it was
better when the dense forest shut out the breeze and reflected the
sunbeams down with greater strength on the corn, so dearly loved by the
American. They hear not the sound of the busy mill when they mourn for
the fish-deserted brooks, and forget that when moose meat was more
plentiful than now bread stuffs were ground in the wearying hand-mill.
One of this respectable class of grumblers was our present
acquaintance, and here he sat in his porch, with aspect grave as the
stoics--his tall form, although in ruins now, was stately in decay as
the old forest's pines. His head was such as a phrenologist would have
loved to look upon; the true platonic breadth of brow, and lofty
elevation of the scalp silvered over, told of a mind fitting in its
magnitude to spring from that gigantic continent whose streams are
mighty rivers and whose lakes are seas; but, valueless as these, when
embosomed in their native woods, were the treasures of the old man's
mind, unawakened as they were by education, and unpolished even by
contact with the open world, yet still, amid the crust contracted in the
life he had led, rays of the inward diamond glittered forth. The
wilderness had always been his dwelling--in the land he had left, his
early days had been passed in hunting the red deer or the red man on the
Prairie fields--there, with the true spirit of the old American, he had
learned to treat the Indian as "varment," although a kindlier feeling
was awakened towards them in this country, where white as well as red
were recipients of England's bounty, and many a tale of wild pathos or
dark horror has he told of the experience of his youth with the people
of the wild. In New Brunswick his days had passed more peacefully. He
sat this evening with his chair poised in that aerial position on one
leg which none but an American can attain. Ambitious emigrants, wishing
to be thought cute, attempt this delicate point of Yankee character, but
their awkwardness falling short of the easy swing necessary for the
purpose, often brings them to the ground. A beautiful English cherry
tree, with its snowy wreathes in full blow, stood before him; he had
raised it from the seed, and loved to look upon it. It had evidently
been the object of h