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Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est filmd d partir de Tangle supirieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n^cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 RNTKHED according 10 Act of the Parliament of Canada, in tl.o year 1897. by .loUN .1 AMEB Pkoctkr, at tlie Department of Agriculture. THE. Philosopher In The Clearing. BY A.DTHOR OF "THE RAGGED PHILOSOPHER," "THE STANDARD BEARER AND OTHER POEMS," " VOICES OF THE NIGHT," ETC. QUEBEC : Daily Telegraph Print. 1897 131860 PS 84-8/ flt tl)e '" xtz of tl)c Clcapincf. O OME 3'ears ago, when I was asked by the editor of the St. _]^ Johns News — who must be forgiven in that he did it in ignorance, and never dreamed of the amount of boredom he was preparing to inflict on himself and his readers — to contribute to his paper regularly, I was for a moment inclined to refuse, being appalled at the prospect of having something to write about every week. I had not learned at the time that it is the easiest thing m the world to say it when you have nothing to say, and, very frequently, the hardest thing when you have. That is the reason why the fair sex are so eminently gifted in the oratorical line, and why men are either silent altogether, or make an awful mess of it when they do speak. However, I concluded, as too many unfortunate readers are aware, to try the experiment, and then came the question what line I should take, and in what guise I should present myself. As I pondered over these things my eyes lit upon an old stump by the roadside, and suddenly there came before me a vision of the half-forgotten past when I first came into this country, and when all was an unknown land to me, even as the literary journey on which I was preparing to embark was. It was late in the fall of one of the fifties when, after a stay of some four weeks in Montreal, I set out to make my abode in a certain village of the Eastern Townships, which was better known to its neighbors at that time by the name of Slab City, than by the one it insisted on being called, though it eventually succeeded in carrying its point. How well do I remember the long day's ride in the stage under a hot sun from St. Johns to Stanbridge East, at which point 1 rested from my joltings for the night ! How exciting was the constantly recurring speculatioi. as to which wheel was coming off first as we rumbled into and out of holes in which a calf might have been buried, and in which occasional cats, young puppies, and other agricultural products were ! What an AT THK GATE OF THE CLEARING. inventive, and at the same time thrifty genius of the inhabitants it showed when attempts at mending the worst parts of the road by filling them up with old boots, and worn-out stovepipes were observable ' And, in the parishes nearest St. Johns, what a lot of children there were ! All young ; they never seemed to get beyond a certain age ; but they made up in numbers what they lacked in maturity. Sturdy little urchins looking cherubic enough to have just come out of the garden of Eden, and about as scantily clad as if they had ; some of them, indeed, being, like Horace, clothed in their own virtue — and nothing else. These, and the dogs, which formed almost as large a portion of the population as the children, and the bright-eyed smiling women that came to the doors as the stage rolled by, were the salient points of my reminiscences of that .)ld-time ride. But the most salient points were the cahots — " cow holes " as I then understood them to be called, and I thought that perhaps they were the " buffalo wallows " of which I had read in England, and kept a bright look out for the buffaloes. But I never saw any. " The shades of night were falling fast " long before we drew up for a few minutes at the post-office in Bedford, and the scenery between that village and Stanbridge was as indefinite as a Liberal's conceptions of a commercial policy, so that when I rose up in the morning, and looked out of the bed-room window, my eyes fell for the first time on a genuine Canadian clearing ; a vast field that stretched from the very yard of the little inn to the bush in the distance, and full of stumps. Stumps of all shapes and sizes ; smooth ones, splintered ones, stumps blackened with fire, stumps whitened with sun and rain. I think there was some grass, but I am not sure ; I know there were lots of little pools of water, and a great many stones ; and there were some ten or a dozen melancholy sheep scattered about, looking very like what the hundredth ovine must have done when it had strayed off from the ninety and nine. But the one predominant idea was stumps. Involuntarily I looked about for the wolves. I had read a great deal about the Canadian wolves, and this seemed just the place AT THE GATE OF THE CLEARING. where one might expect to see them, but I didn't, any more than I saw the buffaloes. Yet thi.s expectation was not so very absurd after all, for I did hear once or twice after of a wolf being seen in the vicinity ; but he was an untruthful and delusive animal, partaking of the opposite characters of angels' visits, in that he was " few and far between," and of a politicia\''s aiite-election promises, in that he failed to materialize, or, if he di^l, turned out to be .some stray dog out on a sheep-stealing expeditioi : just like a politician. However, the scene, which is connnoii enough, impressed me very strangely at the time with a simse of weird loneliness which I had never experienced before. And yet, when a school-boy, I had spent hours, and sometimes whole days, in roaming over the great furze and heath-covered wastes of the Westmoreland und Yorkshire mountains along which a nuui might travel from Kendal to the Scottish border without seeing a human habitation, or the trace of human civilization beyond the difterent flocks of sheep that dotted every steep hill side. But there the conflict between man and nature was ended, and peace hud been signed. The time when that vast upheaval had been covered by the stately trees of the forest had long passed away, and left no trace behind it ; here, the struggle was just begun, and I was looking down on one of the battle-fields still cumbered with the evidences of the strife* and the slowly decaying bodies of the fallen. There I was face to face with nature quietly contemplative in a settled order of things ; here was a state of transition ; man breaking in on the old peace. I carried that picture away with me then, and shall still carry it till all earthly pictures are effaced. It rose up before me as I was pondering over the request of the editor of the News, and I said to myself, " There you have it. J\ist fancy yourself back on one of those old stumps, and philosophize on things in general and nothing in particular." I was, in a measure, adapted for philosophizing, too, so far as externals went. My wife complained, (as she complains with tears in her eyes to this day), that she never could get me to look decent. I hate " fixing up "; and I have a pecuUar affection for - I . H»B»?Wf5IWBn™ 6 AT THK GATK OF THE CLKAKING. old clutho.H, partly because they are more comfortable, and partly because one is never distressed with fears of spoiling them. It was iu vain that she represented to me that I owed something to society, and tliat 1 ought to at least appear res])ectable. T replied that when society footed my tailor's bills, it might dictate wiiat 1 siioiild wear, but that so long as I had to perform that unpleasant operation myself, I should consult my own convenience, and society, if it did not like it, might go to Bath, and further, if it chose. It was just at the end of one of the daily discussions on the subject that I confided to her my intention of writing philosophical articles i'rom the stump by the roadside, on which she exclaimed, " You a Vhiloso]>her 1 a pretty ragged IMiilosopher you'd make." And this is how I came to be a Magged Philosopher, and v/rite nonsense. I may have sinned deeply : I am only too conscious that I have ; but I trust it will be taken into merciful consideration that I was brouglit into literary existence by the coml)ined forces of an editor and a woman ; and what goodness can yon expect from the influence of the one, or sense fiom the influence of the other ? < pausincf crt the (gate. The Ppefaee. " There are more things in heiiven iind enrth, Huratio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy "; Jam not quite certain whether that is the cuiijct (juotivtiou, but it does not matter if it isn't ; it will serve my purpose just as well, and that is all that I care about. The reader will be kind enough to bear it in mind before he starts any objection to finding the preface to a book come in a diiferent order to that which is generally assigned to it. There are reasons : and reasons probably that would never have occurred to him had this book not been written. In the first place, I am desirous of having something original ; not very much ; I am quite content with a limited pos- session in that line, being satisfied, in the main, with common- places dressed up and served in a iiiud of literary boarding-house hash for present use ; but still I should like, for my own sake, a little bit of originality, and since Solomon assures us that there is nothing new in the way of human thought under the sun, I see no other means of attaining the fulfilment of my modest aspirations save by putting the preface where it "didn't ought to was." Secondly, authors may not be aware of the fact, but readers are, that a preface is never read. " Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird," and the general reader is a great deal too wary to bother himself with a preface, a thing which is usually as dry and uninteresting to anybody but the writer, as the old Sunday school books which contained biographies of " Little Mary Jane," and happy death beds of infantile saints ; or if it was at all witty and interesting was simply an exasperating button-holing of the reader anxious to plunge at once in mediaa res. Any way, interesting or not, prefaces are never read, as I intend, this to be, and therefore I am going to get it in surreptitiously, and as a sort of surprise party, for it would be manifestly 8 PAUSING AT THE GATE. THE PREFACE. i!: dorogatory to ray wisdom as a philosopher to write something that I knew beforehand would not be looked at. There are other reasons also ; but " enough is as go(jd as a feast," though that is a proverb that will not stand close examination. Having thus estublished, I hope satisfactorily, that the placing of a preface in the contents of a book, instead of before them, is not a totally indefensible proceeding, however startling it may appear at first sight, I am conscious that I shall meet with the objection that if I wished this of mine to be read I should not have announced it with a flourish of trumpets, and proclaimed it from the house tops. Here again, I must refer to the statement of Mr, Shakespeare with which I commenced. The fact is that. I don't intend to take any chances, as I informed my publisher when he suggested that it would be a great deal more gi'and and heroic for me to risk my capital than to risk his, I did not dispute the assertion, but I put it to him that, as a jihilosopher, I could not be expected to set any value on glory and fame, which are perish- able articles at bust ; that, indeed, it was perfectly impossible for me to consent to acquire them, and that since they doubtless >. uld be gained by the publication of my book, he was the only one to whom they could fall. He looked dubious, but " the woman that hesitates is lost," and so is the publisher. Now either a preface is, by artful contrivance, read, or it is not read. That seems to be incontrovertible. If this of mine falls under the former category, 1 shall have gained a point ; if under the latter, 1 shall have gained a point still. Not the same, I grant, but another. Did it ever strike you, (but of course it never did) what unlimited possibilities for the author there are in an ordinary preface. Secure in the knowledge that it will be passt'd over unheeded, he can say what he likes. He can preface a treatise in favor of Free Trade with an elaborate disquisition on the advantages of Protection ; a geography, with the statement that the world is flat, and that if you only go far enough, you will tumble oif ; a treatise on medi- cine, with a defence of the principles of christian science ; a volume of orthodox sermons, with the theories of the Theosophists ; and PAUSING AT THE fiATK. THK PREFACE. 9 nobody will \h} any thi) wisiT. By the aid of u preface he can even go so far as to construct, unuidcd, a full party pngraninic, a thing which inasmuch as it enilmici\s every theory known to the p(jlitical world, hiis iiitherto hiid to be got up in sections in this country ; a little bit in each I'rovince ; and which, desjiite the numerous talented minds that have been working at it, has never yet been blended into one harmonious whole. But tiie author can do it — with a j)reface — and can answer any objections made to liis book by the entjuiry " Have you read what 1 advanced in my preface/" (>r course the answer is "no," with probably the mut- tered addition, "and don't intend to.' Then the objector stands convicted before the world of not having fully mastered his sub- ject, and is silenced acct)rdin"ly. This is how I stand to win on either event. Read this, and yuu will probably be too wearied and listless to be capable of making any comi)laint afterwards ; don't read it, and then i^ ou sliould .uy the book is dull and stupid the answer is that you Ir. vi- not perused it with suthcient care, and it i^ your fault, not rnme. I have chosen as a rrontisi>ioce an owl sitting on a stump. The stump is obvious enough ; j)erhai)3 a little too obvious ; Init the owl is more debatable. I never could satisfactorily make out whv that bird should be assigned to the Goddess of Wisdom : he's not particularly wise that I know uf ; in fact, if you catch him out by daylight, which is not a very .isual tlung to do, he looks particularly foolish. He bolts his food whole ; and that any child studying hygiene under the auspices of the committee of Public Instruction can tell you is very injurious to the digestion. It is also a further proof of iiis deplorable lack of education that he does not seem to sutler from dyspejjsia by the j)ractice. He is a dissipated bird, too, and keeps late hours ; doesn't do any work in the day time, and comes down to breakfast when the shades of night are gathering fast, a lamentable ])roof of his utter di.sregard for the feelings and convenience of Mrs. Owl. What he does when he condescends to leave his bed at a time when respectable birds are either in theirs or preparing to go to them, is accurately BBBH 10 PAUSING AT THE GATE. THE PREFACE. known to few, except the tield-mice ; and they have nothing good to report about liim ; but I have a suspicion that he drinks ; and something stronger than water too ; for' if you happen to be awake in the wee sma' hours, you will hear him attempting to say " Truly rural" to Mts. Owl when he goes home, or practising what he calls singing on some old dead branch. A little later on you will hear him snoring ; and if you pass his house in the morning he will be hiccuping in his sleep. Now you can't call such a bird as that a fitting companion for a prim old school marm like Miss Minerva, and I don't believe she had anything to do with him. It's all a vile slander, and was probably started by some disgruntled ratepayer when Minerva commenced her educational life as teacher of an elementary country school. Not that I consider the owl an ass (intellectually asinine, of course) ; far from it. He knows enough to enjoy life according to iiis lights, or rather, in his case, twilights, which, I take it, is more than a great many of us, male and female, old and young, wise and foolish, know how to do. We are all of us fed with a species of providential bacon, in which the fat of prosperity is intermingled witli the lean of adversity, and sorrow, and disappointment ; and we cannot take our lean uncomplaingly : it spoils our enjoyment of the fat. We are like the old lady whose rheumatism more than counter- balanced a comfortable home, assured means of living, and good friends; we think more of the crumpled rose leaves than the smooth ones in our beds. You never find an owl doing that. If he misses his swoop at a too nimble mouse, he merely remarks " Hoot, mon ! but ye're gey and lucky," and goes off in search of another without troubling himself further about the absconder. I don't know whether he ever goes home without his supper, or whatever he calls his meal, but he always goes home jolly, and saying Tooral-looral. Bright moonlight, or murky dark, wet or dry, it is all the same to him, at any rate so far as he can be heard from, and there is no question about his enjoyment of life. Even when he gets belated in the daytime, and is surrounded by a host of little birds reviling him, and pretending to peck at him, he sits PAUSING AT THE GATE. THE PREFACE. 1] blinking in a humorous manner as if the whole show was ^ot up for his entertainment, and does not appear the least troubled with his novel position. He's a wise bird in his way, thougli decidedly not intellectual, and has a solemn and pretentious air which is very imposing. I think lie and I have some points of resemblance. And now that I liave made these things clear we will come down to the business of this chapter. Let me see ! what was it ? oh ! the preface — Yes ! the preface ! Well, now ! You must be aware that I have already reached tiie limits of an ordinary well behaved chapter in getting ready to say what I was going to say ; and 1 shouldn't wonder if you were tired. What is of a great deal more importance, (to me), is that I can tired whether you are or not, and so I am going to put the shutters up and close the wisdom store till next morning. What is that you're saying? "You haven't come to the preface yet." Now I think of it, you are right ; you haven't; and what is more, I don't believe there is any prospect of your doing so. What does it matter ? You would not liave read it if you liad ; and now you are in the proud, and I Hatter myself, original position, of having perused a preface that never was written, and never will be. That alone is more than worth the price of the whole b^ok. M ' m )e .r^C'-r^" ■ ■ ■ ^'^ ■ ^*''= g'* '"**>" ' w *«*MWM*>i**w •i In tlie Cleapins- On Pi^eeonecivcd Ideos. ^, !;' 1 1 •/i \ • j I t \ 'I, 'I ©PEN confession, they say, is -ood for the soul, and what "they say," must be true, the gh I have always been a little suspicious of the maxim, having observed that those who are most active in preaching it, are also, generally, those who are most backward in coming forward to the practice of it, and I am not sensible of any particular moral benefit that has accrued to me for confiding my preconceived notions of Canadian zoology to a heart- less public that will probably laugh at me instead of sympathizing with me. And yet if I looked upon Canada in my earlier days as a paradise for young women, where any amount of bears was ready to hug them to their heart's content, and a terrible place for innocent masculine lambs like myself, whom wolves were always ready to devour, yet I was not so very far astray after all, for there are bears in the province of Quebec, because I've seen them ; and I know there used to be wolves, but they have since evolved into contractors, and politicians, and wander over the country amid metaphorical instead of literal stumps. In those days, however, I kept my ideas to myself as much as I could, and so avoided having them enlarged and improved, as happened to a young Englishman who had come into the country about a year before I did, and had grf)wn confidential with the genial Collector of Customs who dwelt in Slab City and kept one eye on one side of the line, and the other on the other side This young man had precon- ceived an idea, that the boundary separated two races of men as distinct in thought, 3peech,and appearance as the heathen Chinee.and the new woman, and he was encouraged in the belief by his confidant. " Yes ! " said the Collector, " the difference is very perceptible, and strikes the thoughtful observer immediately he crosses the line. Of course, I don't say that there is any change in the scenery close by the border, but in everything else there is a marked alteration, even in the atmosphere. However, there is t:li ' IN THE CLEARING. ON PRECONCEIVED IDEAS. 13 nothing like seeing for yourself, and as I am going to drive over to West Berkshire on the other side, I shall be happy to have your company." The offer was accepted, and the two jogged along merrily for a mile and a half, when the Collector pointed out the boundary stone. Now, as luck would have it, just at this precise moment one of those pretty little bushy-tailed animals, which are as renowned for their jicrfume as any city girl, had run across the road, and the air was blue with the remarks he made, en passant. The Collector rose to the occasion. " Here we are just crossing the line," said he, " and I told you there was a difference in the atmosphere. Perha})s you are able to distinguish it ? " By this time they were in the full enjoyment of the odours of Araby the Blest, and the Englishman was looking pale, and holding on to his nose with both hands. " Yes " he gasped, " there is a decided difference. Unpleasant, too, I should say, but I suppose the natives are accustomed to it. I think, if you'll excuse me, I'll get out and walk back." And he did. What is more, during his brief stay there, nothing would induce him to go in that direction again. His preconceived notions had l)eeu more than corroborated by experience. It was useless to argue with him ; he pinned his faith on the Collector and the — Sk — k. Mutato nomine de tefabida. In these days of Vassar and Girton there is no need of apology to the fair reader, if I have any, for quoting Latin, but for the benefit of the weaker masculine intellect I may translate it briefly into the vernacular, " You're another." We all of us have our preconceived notions, and they are all more or less erroneous and absurd. When Mr. Pecksniff' expressed an overwhelming desire to be favoured with his land- lady's ideas of a wooden leg, I rather fancy he would have been considerably astonished if his wish had been gratified. We cannot, unfortunately, get at her ideas now, but I should not be at all surprised to learn that the worthy lady's ideal of a wooden le in j)hilo3ophicul disquisitions, I lit' at the font of it. I urn doinf,' ,so now. It is drawing' to the cloan of a hot suninitir'.s day, and tho air is dancing up and down in ^dassy undulations. Thore are other dancers besides the air, in ihf sli!i]»(' nf myriads of small flies, that seem to me never to deviate from tli>'ii' iv-ijici'tivc tracks to ri;^ht or to left, but to keep a [)erpetual alternation of ascent and descent. T call them flies; some peo|)k' (.ill ilicm ^Miats ; and others aj,Min, mid so ; I shouKln't 1),' suri)risod if it were. I know that I should b.i dead myself long before the twenty-four hours had expired, if I attem])t(!d to take the violent exercise they do, and I wonder if they have any idea that there is such a thing as perspiration. They arc not social economists ; that's evident. I should like to catoh one of them, if I crjuld, and explain to them of what enormous waste of motive power they are guilty, and of how much more use it would be to the world if they were to form a combine, and run a cotton mill, for instance. They could do it if they chose. Of course some one would have to build the mill for them, but they could run it afterwards and pay him off out of the profits. "Just consider, my little friend," I woidd say to one; " here you are raising your body two or three feet into the air about twenty times every second. It's not ranch of a body, it is true ; but then there are thousands of you ; millions ; myriads I should say, if there are corresponding swarms of you round every stump in the field. And you are at this work from the minute you are born to the minute you die — twenty-four hours ; that is, 86,400 seconds ; and twenty times a second makes 1,728,000 times; and 3 feet at a time makes 5,184,000 feet. Now, suppo- sing it takes ten million of you to weigh a poimd, (and you really look a great deal stouter than that), and supposing also that there is at the least calculation a pound of you jigging up and down by this stump, you have exerted a force equal to raising over five million pounds a foot high during your lifetime. What's that you ■ I 92 AT TnF FOCiT OF TITF f^TtTMr. DAXf'INV;. say ? That yoii nrn dancing for your own uniusomcnt, and not for men's profit > Tlmt Im u very wron^j view to tnki-. It is not moral, and you wmuot ,st*rii)u.sly entertain it, It would griovc mo dooply to think then; was such a thinf( as an immoral F,|>ht'morid. No I my littlo friend ! Wo are ull pln^'Ml in this world to assist and support one another, and ." May do<^s defile the yrave of that mos piito's ifrandmoth'r ! The r.iscil has hittcMi me on the nose. I wonder which of us was right; T in lookiuf^ on daiuiu^' in a practical liuht as a species of labour, or the Kphcinerid in regard- incr it as an amusement. Sav;ifj;t' and heathen nations hav<^ asso- (jiated it with religious ceremonies, and thus, combining,' tiie idea of service performeil with an ex[)rcssion of icjoicinj; and thanks- j^iving, have invested th<.' act with the characteristics of both work and play. There is no doubt that as a religious cerciuouy dancing played an important i)art iti the .Fewish rilual, but Christianity refuses lo recognize it as a part of religion, and indeed sonn* creeds profess to look \x\nm it as immoral, or, at the very least, unbe- coming. And, no doubt, it would be a considerable shock to see the Archbishops of Canterbury an 1 Vijrk, and the bishops of the F^nglish church, dancing a schottische in St. Paul's Cathedral in lawn sleeves and knee breeches; or the Pope and his Cardinals going throiigh the mazes of a country dance in St. I'eter's. We have operatic singers to sing solos in our churches, and the musical talent of our choirs is a great factor in gathering a good congrega- tion ; but dancing is " a horse of another colour." We draw thf line at the music. In proportion as the re!igi(jus phase of dancing was discarded, the heathen nations of (rrcece and Rome, and the scmi-civilized peoples that succeeded them, camt; to look upt)ii dancing as a labour, and one, moreovijr, that was beneath tlieir dignity. It is related of a Turkish ambassador to a Eurojiean court, that when he first witnessed a ball, he expressed his astonishment that people should take so much trouble. " In my country " said he, " we have girls to do the dancing, and look on oui'selves."" Them's my sentiments, exactly." I can admire the grace and elegance of girls "" AT THK I'OnT nV THK i^Tl'Ml'. KANi'IMl. is id not for lot nionil, rif ilooply rid. No : Assist and \ },'rave of p on thn lanciii}^' in if\ regiird- llllV(^ 11930- 2, the idwi lid tlianka- b(jth work ly dancing Jhristiiiuity Dini' ci'tieds !iist, unbe- :i()ck to vS«e lops of the ithodral in Cardinals tor's. We ,lii', musical I cougrcga- ii draw til'' trainiHi to drincn, but sui-iciy dances have always seuincil to in« absurd and ridioulons, niort! csprcially in the niaie sux, thii ^^tater portion tu whom invariably look as it' they wmdd put their hands in tln'ir pui!k»*ts, wt-n; they not fiidiarrasst'd by an insane desire to put their feet ...re too. Which i,'ivfi them an a>pi'ct ot'iniK'cisiou. I (jdii't mind confessing' that I half d iii iic iiivsell; my lirat .ievious trouble came friim it, when, as a litih' li\eyear-uKI, 1 was setit to a dancing school tn K-arn tlir ait. Th iv 1 met with my fate; a wickeil little llirt of sweet six, with \>\\\r . y( s, h.ng lUirLs, and short potficoals. 1 fell madly, distractedly, in love with her, and, oh Idiss! my passion was retiirncil. We h.id got so tar as to fliscuss an clopcmriit. whrn thi' usual \illaiii inltiAciied, in the sluijte of a b(jy a year iiMnie. ."Strange how the events of our youth repeat themselves in d'ler hfe! The dew is falling, and 1 am getting dam[), and once mure I want tu go home. I'm going. s discarded, 111 -civilized nciiiij as a nity. It is that when that people d he, " we Th;jui's my nee of girls rr." iinl In cr Tctngic. m *'\ /jT is a mark of the philosopher that his trained and well regu- ^ lated mind is able to perceive clearly things which are either imperceptible, or but dimly seen by other people ; and it is a further mark that he can receive calmly and without surprise these quasi-discoveries which would be startling to common minds, if they came without any previous preparation for them. One of these discoveries which the true philosopher makes is that he is an ass. He is continually making it, and — forgetting it ; so that when he comes upon it for, say, the hundred and tirst time, it has all the merit of a novel sensation. This is my hundred and second, and still it is as astonishing as when it tirst dav,'ned uj)on me. But I don't congratulate myself; far from it. Evil was the day when 1 persuaded myself that a man ought to keep up with the spirit of the times ; that be should leave the beaten jiaths of Conservatism, and wander down the sinuous byways traced out by youthful Liberalism. Still mori^ evil was the day when, forgetting the example of my great ancestor Adam, I listened to the words of feminine lips, and hastened to guide Jiiy steps by the light of feminine wisdom. I'tterly crushed and broken down for the moment, I am repenting of my folly, when too late, in n;eta])hori- cil dust and ashes, and in literal Ijrown ))a]ier, vinegar, and court- plaster. "Oh, my !" as Mr. Fledgeby remarked when he, too, had come to grief through a woman's instrumentality, "Oh, my !" "The King's daughter is all glorious within," wrote the psalm- ist. She might be in those days, and she may be now, for anything I know to the contrary. I cannot contradict the assertion from actual experience, for I never dissected om; ; though just at present I'd dissect half a hundred of them with the greatest pleasure in life if I could get hold of them. But this T can safely say : they are anything but glorious without. Apples of Sodom are they ; fair IX A TANGLE. •^'O ^ell regu- •hich arc :iud it ia a irise these minds, if One of It he ia an that when has all the econd, and le. Bnt I ly when I le spirit of iservatism, youthful retting the words of le light of for the n;eta])hori- and court - too, had ny . the psalni- H' anything rtion from at present sure in life : they are thev ; fair .1 to view, but bitter to the taste ; shifting sands, that under the appearance of solid ground engulf the unwary wayfarer ; mossy quagmires, with nothing green about them except the fellow that trusts himself to them. Xever, never, never will 1 listen to a King's daughter again. If I lived to be a thousand years old, and had to be married a hundred times in that period, I would keep a safe distance from courts, and the princesses that dwell in them, and choose my wives from Republican heiresses. It cami' al)nut iu this way. On a never-sufliciently-to-be anathematized day I was reading the Xew \ovV Tribune, and I came on the following paragraph : "At a gathering of King's daughters at London, Ont., the other day, Mrs. (irahatn, of Toronto, on being asked if dancing should be tolerated, replied : 'Yl'h ! but only in the incoming, an hour before breakfast, and then the wot;ian should dance with her liusbnnd nr brtither.' I pondered deeply on this saying, and became convinced that [ had been sinfully nt^lectfui of n.v duties us a husband and master. You will observe that Mrs. (rraham did not say the woman, (that is every woman in the household) '*may" dance, but "should" dance, clearly meaning that it u the duty of every woman to dance, and that she should lie assisted by her husband, or brother, as tlie case might be, in doing so. My liousehold is singularly wtdl arranged for sucli a ])ursuit, and we can always }iair otf like members of the Legislature when they don't want to have their names ajipearing in tlu; division lists. There was my wife and myself; the cat, Naomi, and the dog, dim ; the hired man, N"athan, and the hired girl, Bloomah ; husband and wife, as required by ]\Irs. Graham : the cat and dog were not exactly married, but they (juarrel so continuously that they have every clnim to be considered in the light of a loving couple ; and as for Nathan and Bloomah, I knew that he had proposed to her a few days before, and she had told him that she loved another, but she would always be a sister to him ; so there again the conditions under which dancing became a moral duty were fuHilled. You see, the house- hold was already splendidly mated for saltatory exercise ; husband w 26 i\ A 'rAN'OT-i';. and wife ; cat and dog; hrotljer and sister. It really seemed to me, as a sense of neglected duty dawned on me from a perusal ot Mrs. Graham's words, tlint the tingor of Providence had hccu pointing that way fi;ir a long tiint' anil that I'verything was pre- pared to facilitate the ])erforman('e of duty. "Tln' \\oman should dance." (Jf course, ilow was it that this had never occurred to me before, th(Aigh I had noticed that Bloonuih was develo]iing a tendency to fatten up like my prize pig, and was just about as much disinclined Id bestir herself about her ordinary avoratious '( The liour lixed iiikui was alsfp singularly convenient. We ke'ep uji the good nid fasliion of i'auiily jirayds Ijeforc breakfast, and all the household is then assembled i.: the diuiiig-roiuii. The eat and tlie ting ilun'l joiti in, of e.iur; ■, but tliey listen very attentively, or else imitate the example oi' a fashidiiable congre- gation during the sermon, and go in slt-ej), which is as much as can be expected from animals that are iim -dited with possessing souls, (I am referring to the cat and. dn^, ;i(,i the congregation;, so, as I said, we arc all assembled just at the proper tinu^ ; and that, again, was a manifest sign in wdiat direction my duty lay 80 I concluded to iK.'gin the very next nuirniug, and have a good ilance before breakfast, instead ol jirayers, three times a week. Mrs. (Iraham did not say tliat a wdiiian should dance every day, and 1 thought every other one, lea\ing Sunday as an olf day, would be siiilicient for a beginning. I did not take my wife into jny confidence, thinking I would surprise her. So ] did; and afterwards she surjirised me — she and lllcomah combined. 1 detest combines now as much as any Liberal does. 1 went to bed full of virtuous inteiuiims, and as Southey says of Bislio]) llatto, who was eaten up by rats, 1 '-shipt that night lik(; an innocent man." He adds, 'dUit Ijishoji llatto never sle])t again," and upon my Word I feel as if 1 were going to l)e in the same predicament ''Oh, uiy ! I tlo ache so." The fateful morning came ; but I thought it advisable pre- viously to give Nathan instructions to ensure everything going ol!' smoothly. "Nat," I said, '• We are going to vary the religious exercises a little this morning, so keej) your eye on me, and you ■'I IX A TANdLK. em sal ot liad h'''i"i^ \va^ I'l'i'- iii sliotili-l jcurred to oloyiin;j a ; , about as { ocations ( iont. NVc })rriikfast, ;■ Kllll. 'Hio listen very l,le ciingTe- '^A ri TIlUCll as |)()ssessin;„' igregatidn;, time ; ami .y duty lay lavc a gofid es a week. every day, |;in oil' day, V ^vit'e iutn 1 ditl; and nliined. 1 kveut to bed ho]. Hatto, |m iimoceut. ," and upon [iredicaiuenl Ivisablc pre- In.^ j^oing oir he religious iie, and you and P.lo'iinah inii.^t Just follow me and my wife." He looked a little astonished, l>ut said it was all ri^ht, and he would. So when wo stood lip to sinrj the openiu},' hymn, I just elippcd my wife round the waist and heyan to waltz round the room, singing lustily, "Up find down tlie cihbler's bench 'I'he monkey chased the weasel ; The [)!iison kissed tiio cobbler's wife, And Pop ! goes the weasel." N'atlinn followed suit, luigging Bloomali lik(^ a hear, and dancing like one, too. He trod on the cat's tail at the first start, and she tlew at the dog; and tlie two adjourned under the table, which was the only safe plaee for them, for a free figlit. They had to keep it up, too, for neither of them dared run from under the table while we' were whirling round in the giddy maze, and when the waltz came to an end there was as much hair and fur on the ground as would have stuffed a decent sizi^d mattress. Feeling a little tire 1 at the end of live minutes, Idrojij.ed my wife on the sofa, and Xatluiu dumped lUoomah into tlu^ roeking- chair fnv a brief intermission. l^>efore they could either of them get enough breath to sjjeak, we, had them oil' again ; this tiuu' to the strains of '''I'a-ra-ra J>oomdeav,"' which we afterward toned d( wn to T ,\'o atlle ( iiri m lUue," f(U' the pace was kill iul:. "W'liat was left of the r.it liad taken advantage of tht; jiause to seek refuge on the toji of the liigh cupboard in which we kiiep the crockery; at least, I >aw a tail as thick as a stovejtipe waving up th'^re; T don't know if there was any l)ody to it. As for the dog, he couldn't Ite seen anvwliiu'e ; and I afterwards heard that when he was found ness of na kcdi , he was under the sofa trying to cover the unwonted his hinder parts in one of my big falling boots, and the corresponding baldness of his jiate in the other. He has com- phitely lost one eye, and, to iuak(> things cvou at the other end, has (Uily two inehes of his tail left. We had another iut 'rmissiini, but I delayed ton long, hum- ming over "After the lUU," whi(di I thought would boa fitting tune for the conclusion of the cereTnony. This gave time to my 28 IN A TAXGl.E, wife and Bloomah to recover from their surprise ; they did not recover breath for two or three minutes more ; and the first intim- ation I got of it was a whack on the back of the head from the Hying coSee pot, the spout of which got jammed between my collar and my neck, and poured the whole of the boiling liquid down the small of my back. Xathan basely turned tail, and bolted, but, I am hap})y to say, the women finished him otf in the kitchen after they had done with me. What they did. I cannot precisely say. I have a confused idea of a storm of flying cups, saucers, plates, knives and forks, spoons, toast, eggs, and other articles too numer- ous to mention; and wlieu these were exhausted, of being assailed with all the opprobrious terms that were ever known to man, and a whole dictionary fall of more that were specially invented for the occasion. Let me draw a veil over the scene. A woman when she gets mad is the very — hem I and there were two of them. You mav imagine the rest. King's daughters, indeed ! Bother the King's daughters, and very ])articularly bother Mrs. Grah'am, if they can't do better than lay down rules that a fellow cannot follow without making a martyr and an ass of himself; and getting anathematized into the bargain. y did not irst intim- from the liny collar 1 down the ted, but, 1 tcheu after eiselv sav. ers, plates, too numer- Qcr assailed man, and ited for the )raan when beni. You Bother the Grah'ani, if mnot follow ,nd getting Heeovcpincf' Aid to Publie Sehools. '•ON FIN, me voild ! On my end, here I am!" I am not ;_,_ quite certain which end it is, but I think it must be the latter one, having been brought so near it in consequence of my imprudence in listcninjj; to a King's daughter, anil not having had much time to make progress on my recovery. And I am the more supported in this conclusion because, if 1 may trust to appearunccs, I am sitting on my old favorite stump, the companion of my meditations, and my tried friend when the conjugal sky is overcast. I say, " if I may trust to appearances," because I am not much disposed to put my trust in anything, and I think David might liave spoken out like a man instead of half way when he said, " Put not your trust in princes " — he ouglit to have added, " or in princes' daughters either " : then, I should have been all right. However, I am the gainer after all by my late experience, for I have deduced from it a very important rule of life, and that is, don't regulate vour conduct to a woman by the advice given by other womeu, especially if she happens to be your wife or your hired girl. I don't mean to say that the feminine mind is not profound — it is too profound for ordinary intellects — or that it is lacking in common sense. It is certain, however, that its precepts are not intended for the guidance of the sex. As the poet very correctly remarks, "The proper study of womankind is man," and woman recognizes the justice of the sentiment. The sole object of her thoughts is man : how he should behave, how he should dress, what he should say, and what he should and should not do. She studies man in all liis pursuits and vocations, from the minister in the pulpit to the politician in the caucus; she sizes him up, and tones him down ; she contemplates him as a possible husband, and a certain lover ; she torments his life out by day, Wl :io UECOVEIiINC;. AID TO IMULIC .Sc;ilOOLS. ,\ ' M iiud droaius about liiiu by night ; ;uid all her ochcmes are devoLoii t(» the iuoimI. iiitullecLual and aojul rjijeuoralu n ul' man. She ULVjr c()!nlesc'L;uds to bother herself abuuL her airfters, or, when she dojs, she i)i(;k.s theui to pieces, and disiuisSviS them with contempt. If I had seen this clearly before I altem[jted to start a family dancing school, I shoidd not have needed the chasteninj,' of i!Xpjrieuce ; an 1, after all. I am not so much di.;[)osed to blame the King's daughters. It was not their fault if I did not understand that in any sahome they may have fjr masculine regeneration, the way in which other wtjiuen will view it when put into practical operation never enters their heads. Their view of creation com- pri-ses but two things, man and his legeuerator. At any r,ii(^ I tini in a fair way for recovery ; and I have been greatly helped t(j this by reading the rejiorts of the })roceedings at the recent (quarterly meeting of ihe Protestant committee of the (Council of Public Instruction. I am delighted to lind that that body has at length awoke to the perception of what I long ago pointed out, namely, that it is absurd and unjust to devote so great a part of the public aid to education lo the support of schools in large and nourishing centres, which are fully able to support themselves, both in scholars and in money, while poi:)r and struggling communities are left to tlic of iii.iuitioii, and are put off with aids which are useless, except for the purjiose of mockery ; one school, which I instanceii, actuaUy re(;eiving twenty-five cents as the Government grant ; a sum which barely covered the postage on the correspondcjice with the department. It is true that this tardy recognition of what 1 pointed out some years ago is only as yet })artial and half hearted ; th;^, committee still clings to the leaven of the Pharisees, and still adheres in a modified form to the principle of apportioning grants by the results of examinations. It apparently contemplates the withdrawal, or, at any rate, tht; reduction of the grants made to schools which are, or ought to be be, self-supporting ; but it still professes to be convinced of the propriety of being guided in its distribution of the public moneys bv the results of the public exainiuati m, and the reports of th(» inspectors combined. w ILS. lilies are devoted •I ui' man. She tors, or, when she lu with cuntempl. to start a family he ehasleiiin,!,' of li.;po.sed to blame I lid not uuier.staud c regeneration, the put into practical of creation com- v ; and 1 have been the proceedings at it committee of the I to liui that that of what 1 long ago ,t to devote so great pport of schools in ly able to support poor and struggling put off with aids ockery ; one school, -five cents as the red the postage on true that this tardy igo is only as yet dings to the leaven lified form to the :«f examinations. It , at any rate, the are, or ought to be )e convinced of the f the public moneys the reports of th(> i;i:r(ivi:HiN(;. aid to vvm.ic schoot.s. 31 T.et mc iry and flear the situation once more in as few words as possible, and explain thi3 i)rinciples which are at issue. The system of )»avnient liy resulis i^; a system of prizes ; and jirizes are awcirdt'il, no! fui i\v aid, but for ilu- rncmiragemenl of education. Ii \< important t(j note and insist on this distinction, because it may li.' urgi'd. iuid with justice, li^it whatt'Vi'.r encourages education , li'>l])< it. Tlii-; i< tru(! enough, sn far ,is it goes, but tlio help , c.KLen li-d i> iiiMdcntal only. 'I'iie prizes given to the classes in a s.'li.jol ai'e no do'iiit of juatorial assistanc(! in stirring u]) emulation :' and tMU'ouraginu' study in the sidiolars, anil, in so far, they ai'.; of ii'l vaul lu't' bji h to the-;", and to the s:'hool itself; but they .ii'.' ?i I iiioi'.' aid, piojji'vly >o callrd, to cducalion, than are the desks of thi' lai'si luolern tashinu, the system of ventilation, the blacklj i.nds, and u'hiT scliool appliances, in fact, without an etlicient staff of teachers, all thi'.sf things art; worse than useless. Now what the hooks, aui] medals, and dijdomas are to the scholars, , that, and no moi'i", are the g..)ve!'nmt;nt grants on the results system ;■' to the schools. 'rii''y ar- jiri/cs for the encouragement of elUcieut % education in a community : th- (udy ditference is that instead of ■\ li'ing given to the scholars, ihey are given to the ratepayers, as ■'^ representeil l.iy the S.diool Commissioners, or the l->o.ard of Trustees. :| I ilunk th It iliis position is so plain and obvious that no one will • attempt to rontrovurt it ; at any rate I ht\e not yet met with anv ::v one who has done so. X iw 1 admit, at on 3e, thai this princii»le is a good one, and alt'jn le 1 witli satisfactory results under certain well detined condi- tions; my objei'tion to it is thai these conditions do not exist in tliis province. They exist only in old, and well settled countries, wh're ever\- eo;inuunity, however small, is able at least to pav for a s luuil (dem Mitary rdu 'ation, by whi''li I nv)A\\ "the three K's, Heading, Kiting, and Hithmetic," without extraneous assistance. Then, the prize system of goveiiiirii-nt gr.mts works satisfactorily # and withuut doing any injuslice, because it has a good basis to : v.dik on. It encourages competition, because, however small may- be the grant received by a school, the sum can be ap])lied to the .' iniprovem.nu of its education, and is not needed for its maintenance. 32 RECOVEKINO. All) TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS. In this country, and more especially in this province, the case is different. It is sparsely populated, and all over it arc littlt; struggling communities that have al)out as much as they can manag(! to provide for their own maintenance, and to whom the scanty pittance which they pay to the raw young girls whom alone they can get as school teachers is a heavy Inirden. No prize system can awaken any spirit of competition in them, from the simple fact that any advance is just as much beyond their reach as the sun is, and from the other simple fact that when a man is struggling for a bare crust of bread, visions (jf glory and of fame are not wont to Hit before liis eyes. What such schools need is lielp, not encouragement. There are communities again in which the Protestant element is so small that they are either obliged now to send their children and pay their tuxes to the l*oman Catholic schools, or soon will be. 1 know of one, and in a t(d(jrably large (lity too, wliere the only thing that keeps it from being struck off entirely from the list of Protestant schools is the presence of French Roman Catholic children who make up half its number. An exceptional ease ? Well, so far as its being in a tolerably populous centre goes, yes ; in other details, no. I have been a teacher, amongst other things, in my day, and I have taught in elemiuitary schools as well as academies, and I call to mind two of the former where the government aid was 812 a year, and where the grant received from the Society fi>r the Propagation of the Gospel in England was mucli more. I don't know whether they have it now ; I rather think they haven't, but I do know that one of them afterwards received that mimificent aid of twenty- live cents to which I have referred, and by this time, at the same rate, it is probably paying the government five cents a year instead of receiving anything. There is no need to go any further. Now, perhaps you will understand why I say that the system of apportioning the public money "by results," is a fiilse and pernicious one in this province, and that the true principle in t^e present condition of Protestant education here is to apply that portion of the money which is devoted to common and elementary education according to the I RECOVERING. AID TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 33 ! case IS irc little, fcliey can 'hom the om alone No prize t'rorn the eir reach a man is I of fame s need is in which iliged now I Catholic ibly larijre struck ol^' lesence of s number. L tolerably A'e been a I taiight in mind two year, and lagation of vv whether '. do know of twenty- . the same ar instead needs of the smaller and poorer communities. To many of these latter it is a matter of life or deatii, to all it is one of simple efficient instruction. It is all very well to exclaim against the incompetency of the teachers, and to endeavor to educate them thoroughly, as is still done. In the name of common sense, if such a thing is known in educational circles, what well educated and accomplished young man or young woman will bury himself or herself in a little obscure rural hamlet, with all its discomforts of living, for a salary not greater than most servant girls get, and infinitely less than that of a good cook, housemaid, ot- waiter ? Educate I Yes! and the educated will go off as clerks in stores and mercantile firms, as type-writers, as book-keepers ; some few may be trapped into a so-called model school, or even an elementary school in a big village. But into an out-of-the-way rustic hamlet, — " not if I know it, Sammy : no ! you don't." s you will the public- IS province, Protestant which is ding to the ill fl Winter^ Fantasy. H' MlOEEMOST amonu, the pioiiceis uf civilization, and the beue- factors of niaiikiiid are tlie North American Indians. It is true that they were uncultured, and their attentions to strangers were more energetic than conventional, .and more warm tiiau agreeable, but tluui every nation has its customs, and there art- fly-specks on the best of us. If they made their c.iptives run the gauntlet, out of that they evolved lacrosse, and would have evolved football too, if rubber had not been scarce ; if they made incursions in the winter, and burned down villages without any regard to the feelings of the innuxtes, or the fact that the thermo- meter was 20 Ijelow zero, they invented snow shoes for the purpose ; if they organized summer surprise parties which ended by their sticking the surprised with lighted pine splinters as full as a hedge hog is of quills, and linally dismi :;ing them in a grand pyrotechnic display, they called into existence the toboggan in their more sedate moments. Lacrosse, snowshoe clubs, toboggan slides, these grand things civilization owes to the Indians. Eh '. "Rather different now to what they were in the time of tln' aborigines ? " Of course. If a man cannot improve on what his ancestors did he had Ijetter have been born before them, and besides, it's a great deal easier to improve on a thing after it is invented, !han to invent it oneself. The criticism is irrational. How is a man going to perfect any idea before it has occurred to any one, I should like to know. Therefore the Indians were tlif pioneers of civilization, and the benefactors of mankind, Q.E.D. Look at snow-shoeing; only look at suow-slioeing. Could there be anything more invigorating, more exhilarating, more delightful ? That is when you get accustomed to it, and don't trip yourself up at the first deep snow drift, and make a frantic attempt to stand on your head on the ground five feet below, while your heels wave wildly in the air, a human semaphore. But when i A WINTER FANTASY. 35 , the beue- aiis. It irt () strangers warm than 1 there art- res run thu vould havr thi',v made ,vithout any the thermo- the luirpose ; led l)y theiv as full as a in a grand toboggan in bs, toboggan dians. Eh '. time of till' on what his them, anil g after it i> is irrational, occurred U> ns were thr 1, Q.E.D. fciug. Could •ating, more id don't trip antic attempt , while your But when these pri'liniinaries are over, uh the glory ol' that steady swinging tramp over the crisp snow that sparkles in a million diamond facets under your feet, while the pure bracing air rushes to mtiet you laden with the breath of spruce and pine, and lills your lungs with the elixir of life. It also converts your beard and moustucln! into a fairy grotto of icicles, so that you couUl not get within two inches of the lips of the pretty girl at your side, however much you niighl feel temiited to do so, and a convenituit turn in the line of march might atford an opportunity. Xever mind ; "there is a tide in the utfairs of men," and besides your nose is looking a little too blue for sentiment. Hark ! How the mounting spirits break out into song; no birds ever sang more heartily. "Ho! Hoi Ho! over the snow, with the blue above and the white below ! Hearts stout and light of the blue and white, over the s])iirkling crust to-night !" What's that break in the song and a roar of laughter instead ? Tompkins gone to grass ? There's no grass now. Pull him out and set him on his legs again. Nose frozen ? liub it with snow, ov stop ! Ask Miss Maude there to " kiss the spot and make it well." All right, old man ! off we go again. Tlie glory ? Ay ! and the liealth and the pleasure and the good fellowsliip of it. Tlu; air is full of laughter and joke and song, and the snow under the feet aings like an accompaniment of fairy bells. Talk about summer birds I Why here is the very essence of music and poetry. Who is that swearing up in the l)ig old pine there ? A squirrel, and he's not swearing either, he is laughing till he can scarcely hold on to the branch. See how his head bobs down and his tail jerks up in a very ecstasy of fun. " Bright eyes," Miss Helen ? It's your own you see reflected in them. Diamonds glance from tho branching [)ine.s, Diiiinondfl cover the uleeping vines, Diamonds star tlio skies above But brighter thy clear pure eyes, my love. Sweet eyes I sparkle when bine skies darkle When night comes down with her starry crovrii Ere the bridegroom sun hath his race begun And sleep still fosters country and town. ifll! 'H 3G A. WINTKU KANTA8V. 1 ,i !' I ..!;! What's that :* " Cluso up in the, real thuro ami don't tall beliind." Clom; up, it is ; only .stoppinj^ to udniiru ihu .-iiiuiirul. Take my arm, Mi.s« Ilclon, we'll get aiunif Taster to catcii them up. Yes ' .snow-shoeing is a grand inveniiim, better than ti»boggan- ing. I don't care much for tobogganing ; one has no time to admire H([uirrel.s. You can't talk soft nonsense when your whoK' attention is devoted to holding on to your toboggan and youi' breath, and your whole soul is wrapt in an earnest prayer that when you reach tiie bottom it may be only your leg that is broken, and not your neck, it is very nice just as you are getting ready to start, but when that toboggan Ixigin-^ to make play you get u vivid idea of a sudden lea|t into eternity. Karth vanishes, and becomes a chaos of whirling i)hantasms ; the heavens — there is n^ such thing as the Heavens ; nothing but a swirlitig blue mist amid which all the stars, fused into one single comet with a tail live million of billions of miles long, dart like the arrow of doom. What was that? An eartiiquake or a volcanic eruption ? )r did that fiend of a toboggan slide out from unilerneath and hit me on tlir back? Only a jump ? Ne.Kt time 1 want to jump I'll go up five miles in a balloon. It would be more comfortable. Where's my breath ? I shall have to advertise for it when I get to the bottom, if I ever do get tiiere, which is doubtful. I don't believe there is a bottom. Somebody has stolen the other end. We have been travelling at the rate of a hundred thousand miles a second through countless years, and we ought to have been there, wherever there is, or if there is a there at all, long before this. I wish I had made my will before I started ; I wish I could remember a prayer ; 1 wish I had been a l)etter man wlien I was alive ; I wish I was otl this tob')g'.>,m now tliat [ am dead. 1 wish Hah ! It's stopping. and I've not been dead at all. Thank Heaven ! If ever again 1 go 1- — -raok ! Lend a hand to pull the toboggan up, and let us try it ■i-i: ■3? agani. Man ! it was grand. I don't lull u; n*iuiirel. h iheiu up. u tobuggaii- ime to your whoU' II iiud your prayer that at i.s broken, 3ttin<^ ready ! you get :i mishes, and -there is nn 10 mist ami' 1 I a tail tivr doom. What lid that fienil t, me on tlu' L go up five Where's my > the bottom, ieve there i» e have been tiond througli erever thero I had made • a prayer ; I ish T was oH It's stoppin,u. ever again 1 let us try ii lYIusinffs ctt NiaW Fall. \1 j\| IdllT seems to me to ccjiiiu lo a clearing with a more gentle "^ ' tread, ami tit hush it to sleep with a mort! tender whisper than she does elsewjiere. The honuistead is lull of lil'e, and eager aiUicipiitions of the morrow ; the graveyard has nothing but the dust of the dead and llie menu)ries of their yestenlay ; the clearing coml)ines them both; tells of the waving forest of the past, and foreshadows the golden gr.iin lields of the future. Whilst the farm house, the handet, and the town represent life in its vigorous . activity, and the cenu^tery represents a vanished life, the clearing is at once the close of one (^\istence and the bi'giniung of another. What does the night-breeze whisjjer among the stum[)S i A regret |,for the forest glories, and a sigh for the present desolation ; or a -vision of the beauty to come ( Who knows i Does the man, or woman, far advanced in years, kiujw whether in the de[)ths of the heart, the regret for past joys, the consciousness of failing powers, or the prospect of the newer anil better life is really the most predominant ^ Does he cling to the memories of youth and maturity, or does he say with the poet, " Tlie siiints arn dead, the martyrs dead, And Mary, imd Our Lord ; and T Would follow with humility i" i ••| I wonder whether I could put his thoughts into verse, and jwhether they would run much in this way. Is there a sigh for the days of yore When the soul looks back on the beaten track ? Is it " ah, for the days that shall be no more," And alau I for the present, all gloomy and black ?" God kuows — not I ; 4 m 38 MUSINGS AT NIGHT FALL. For the soul of man is strange in its ways, An unsolved riddle, a tangled maze. It mingles it-i gladness with sorrow, tts present and past with to morrow ; Dashes its trium|)hs with whispered fears, Mixes its laughter with hidden tears ; It chants in a psalm of thanksgiving The beauty and glory of living. Whilst all tlirough the notes of its poeau fly The undertones of its agony. As the ways of a nesting plover, As the heart of a maid to her lover, As A dream that we lose in awaking, As a flower that is crushod in the taking. As the joy that has fled in the grasping, As the love that has died in the clasping. As the vapour-born lights of the fen Are the souls of men unto men. Have we a yearning sigh for the past. Or a smile that the end is coming at last ? I know not — I. m i < •' ii :i SHl Smooth is the pathway that children tread. Traced out by love, and all hedged in by laughter, With never a care, and never a dread. And never a thought of the coming hereafter ; With the soft liiand stroking the golden head, And the dear voice cooing its dove to rest, And the sweet face bending above the bed. And watching the birdling in its nest ! Ripple of laughter all day long. Patter of little feet, trilling of song I Oh I the sweetness, the sweetness, the sweetness Of the innocent days that Have long gone by I And ah I the fleetness, the fleetness, the fleetness Of Time that has left but their memory ! Fair was the road when youth was strong, When the pulse beat high, and the heart was gay ; When the breezes whispered naught but a song, And flowers studded the pleasant way ; MUSINGS AT NIGHT FALL. 89. "J When the vines were laden with purple and gold, And the apples of Eden hung from each tree ; When the cup of pleasure was easy to hold, And the beauty of woman fair to see. Oh ! the gladness, the gladness, the gladness. The rapture of yoiitii in the days of yore ! But ah ! the sadness, tiiu sadness, the sadness Of elusive joys that return no uiore I For the apples were apples of ISndoni, dust ; And the poison of asps was the juice of the grape And the heart's desire but an empty lust ; And the beauty of woman a soul-less shape. Hard and rougli was the road for the man ; Rugged and hard, to be trod alone, With toil and trouble, and plan upon plan, And frei|uent stumbles o'er rock and stone ; When tlie heart was dead to all joys savj one. The making, and keeping, and n)assing of pelf ; And if aver there entered a ray of life's sun, 'T was lost in the growing gloom of self. Children and wife, he toiled for them, lie said to himself in a dreamy way. He laboured that they might take their ease, And who was tliere that could say him, nay ? Oh ! the gladness, the gladness, the gladness Of seeing the toil-won wealth increase I But ah ! the madness, the madness, the madness Of ever dreaming that gold brings peace. For if the apples of Sodom are dust. The sold ,1," Ophir is iron rust. It might \ eU. be in the tirst beginning Tl at wealth for loved ones was worth the winning, •"'Ut habit grows, and hardens, a-id grows Till it kills ';he stem u))on which it rose, Ai d the heart lies torpid, unable to ble 'd. Sucked dry in the grasp of the devi' i ■ greed. And is it " oh I for the days of yore," As the soul looks bac'ic ag.iin o'er the past ? Or is it "Thark God that they oome no more. And the l.)ng sought vey*- approaches at last "? God knows, not 1, i 1 11 '■•H 4 m^ ■ ,1 •! 40 MUSINGS AT NIGHT FALL. Which it shall be in the Holemn day When the visions of earth are passing away, A smile, or a cry. We are mocked through our years by shadows that flee Still as we strive to i;rasp them, And our joys are dreams of t e memory, E'en as we clasp them. Oh Thou, who seest not as we see, Look on us when we come to Thee: Miserere, Domine I And lo I when at last he h»8 run his race, There rests a, smile on the dead m m's face. By Tlic Wcrfccp Courses. MHERE is a little stream runs through the clearing, and down into the cultivated lauds below. Up above, in the bush, it is quite a respectable brook, with miniature water falls, and small rapids, and chatters along from stone to mossy stone in a sociable manner that is very charming. It is not what you might call sparkling, for the great trees crowd its banks, and shut out the sun light, but it is very merry for all that. The wild birds use it for a bathing place, and after having carefully selected a spot where it is about a quarter of an inch deep, and there is no fear of being drowned, proceed to read the Riot Act over it, as over a tumultuous assemblage of water drops, and disperse it with much fluttering of wing, and jerking of tail ; while the squirrel running over a fallen trunk at some deeper spot, suddenly catches the semblance of another squirrel running along another trunk down below, and halts to give his opinion of such conduct, with bushy tail quivering with indignation, an:l a porfect storm of bad language which culminates in a shriek, and a flash of red lightning. Down below, in the cultivated lands, it holds a direct and even course, and, if it looks more like a drain than anything else, is yet undoubtedly a stream. But in tha clearing it is simply an ooze, where it is not a puddle. It has b^en so blocked up in one ])lace by decaying trunks, and in another by tangled brush that it has lost all Iwart, and dribbles off here and there in devious ways and unexpecteil directions. There are trout up above in it, T know, for I have seen them, and trout below in the drain winch it becomes, not very big ones of course, but still undeniable brook trout, but I won't believe that there are any in the clearing. There is not water enough in any one spot to cover Mk^, knee joints of a middle aged grass-hopper ; and yet Nathan brought me a lish weighing about five ounces which he vowed he had caught not far from my stump. m m 42 BY THE WATEH COUESES. If He wouldn't say how far ; only winked, and said he wasn't going to tell me of the hole, and I believe he had the best of reasons for declining The demoralizing influence which a fish has on the average hunifin conscience is as strange as it is notorious. I am not referring merely to " fish stories," or to all tlie petty deceptions to which an angler resorts to magnify himself and his catch in the eyes of the world, but to other things besides. Above all other pursuits, angling promotes selfishness ; there is the disposition to give misleading advice to a brother angler as to the best fishing resorts, and the best places in them ; and the innocent air with which one fisherman will recommend another to use flies which he knows oo be altogether unsuitable, is only e([ualled by that with ., uii:h a girl lures a young fellow into proposing and being rejected. Anil ' fish puts to rout all previously acquired religious habits. r have known grave and reverend church wardens, and elders, men who raise their hands with holy horror at flowers on the Communion table, and emulate the example of the deaf adder when they hear of choral services, who would nevertheless start off on a Saturday afternoon after a hard week's work, and go to some distant lake or river to enjoy a Sunday's fishing ; and they would come back on the Monday, too, with a goodly string of trout, or ouananiche, or pickerel, and never think of trying to make amends for their evil doings by sending me any. It's very curious, by the way, how fish seem to encourage Sabbath breaking. You may flog a stream, or a pond, from ^londay morning to dewy Saturday eve, withc^t getting as much as a rise, and lo ! on the Sunday there is a perpetual hail storm of leaping fish all through the day. I know the same sort of thing has been observed about a crow ; gun or no gun, you've got to keep out of range of him on week days, but on Sundays you can get almost near enough to put salt on his tail ; and it has been urged from the consideration of the behaviour of birds and fish in this respect, that long experience has taught the lower animals that on one day out of seven they have nothing to fear from the average civilized man. I doubt the soundness of this conclusion. You will observe that there is nothing tempting BY THE WATER COIIRSES. 43 about the crow. He is not j^ood to eat, and he is not used as an ornament for a lady's hat. I have no doubt that he wonders why people shoot at him, and when the day of rest comes, he accepts the fact like the philosopher that lie is, and makes no more ado about it. He doesn't stroll in your barn yard, or crow on your roof, and say " Here I am ; get your gun, Johnnie, if you dare." But a fish knows th it ho is good to cat, and a thing to bo desired, because he himself has eaten lots of other little fish in his day, and enjoyed thein amazingly. When he leaps up on Sunday, he is tempting man and boy, and he knows it, the wicked beggar. I am not sure that I grieve deeply wlien he meets witli retribution, even if it be unrighteous ; though, of course, T wouldn't do it myself on any account ; that is, if I thought the village was likely to know it ; and I know plenty of other men who hold tlie same views on the subject. Besides being the tempter to Sabbath-breaking, the fish is an inspirer of wliat I nia> delicately term deceptive imaginations. VVlien he is brought to the scales he is invariably found wanting, but it is when he takes his own scales away with him that he is prodigious, and only inferior in size to the lies that are told about him. Yet sometimes a fish appears to be possessed of a conscience of its own, and a sense of what is due to veracity. I recollect a case in ])oint when a friend of mine got a well merited rebuke for trying to palm off a " fish story " on me. We had been out on a sporting expedition together to Lake Kiskising, andone day he took the canoe ami went out on the pond, while I, having found a nice little spot where I could fish from the bank, ami smoke comfortably, remained liehin^l. A couple of hours elapsed, during which 1 won't say how many I caught, for fear you would think I was lying, which I never do, but it was a good many, when my friend made his appearance round the jioint and hailed mc. To his enquiries as to the luck I had had, I answered by pointing to the string at my feet, and then asked after his welfare. " Only a couple of dozen," said he ; " they were taking the fly sphmdidly, but just as I was getting warmed to the work I hooked a splendid fellow. By Jove sir, I never saw such a fish in my life before, or 1 li m villi 44 BY THE WATER COURSES. you either. I don't wonder now at the tales of sea serpents. I played him for an hour and a half, nip and tuck ; up the lake ; down the lake ; across the lake." "How on earth did you manage that? " I interrupted ; " You couldn't play such a fish as the one you're talking about and row at the same time." " Eight you are Philosopher," he said " but, you see, when my line was all run out, I just held on to the butt of the rod, braced my feet against the sides of the boat, and let him tow me. And he did it, sir 1 For an hour and a half did that fish pull the heavy boat at an express rate, till, about five minutes ago, he found he was getting into shoal water, (a little over fivo. feet, for I sounded it afterwards), and then a sudden idea seemed to strike him. Instead of making out for the deep again he stopped, stood straight up on his tail with his head and shoulders out of the water, gave a sort of a twirl lound that broke my line, and then swore at me like a trooper for having what he called ' such a confounded heavy old tub.' ' It's luck^' for you,' said he ' that I've been gaining flesh, for last time I was scaled I only weighed 149 lbs, 5 ounces ; but I've toned up since, or you wouldn't have had such a fine run.' What do you think of that ? " I was going to tell him, when a little trout about six inches long leaped out of the water, with a yard of line hanging from his mouth. " I don't know what he thinks," it squeaked, " but I think you're a confounded liar." And he splashed into the water again. You never saw a man so taken aback. I was very glad of it, myself, for I detest anything like exaggeration, or the slightest deviation from truth, and I knew, by sad experience, tliat my own actual catch that day would have been dwarfed into insignificance besides the relation of what he might have cauglit, and ought to have caught, but did not, so that when we got home I should have been obliged to sit on the empty cracker box in the back corner of the post office and general store, while he sat on the counter, and held forth to the . admiring assemblage. That's the sort of way he always used to serve me when we went out in those days. But this time I had him ; and when I got back and said I had caught a land-locked salmon that gave us three square meals a day for four days, and then we had BY THE WATER COURSES. 45 to throw the greater part of it away, because it would not keep any longer, he could only groan and turn up his eyes. He did open his mouth at the conclusion of my story, but I went on to add : "You may think, boys, I'm romancing, but, after all that's only a small fish for that Lake. Here's Bob will tell you he has known fish there that were six feet long, and weighed over 149 lbs. Haven't you, Bob ?" And Bob jumped up and said, "Come along, boys, it's my treat." ^m Ppoduets of ths Cleaning. Weeds. •6| ('^^ clearing in its infancy is a very unpromitsinji; thing to look ,.^J\^ at. At the first glance you would say that to call it a wilderness would be to pay it a wliolly undeserved compliment. It is not even a waste, though it looks desolate and wretched enough for one. It is an extent of unsightly stumps and decaying logs, with stones and rock interspersed, puddles of water here and there in the wet season, and small basins of dead vegetation in the dry, and with a few scanty IjLules of coarse grass, which barely suffice to whet the appetites of the two or three cows, or sheep, that are turned in to get their living as best they mav, and that generallv do so by breaking down the fences, and wandering off into the l)ush beyond. The berrying season is the only time at which the clear- ing appears to any advantage, for there tlie wild strawberry blushes furiously over the mounds and hillocks, and the raspberry clings to the outskirts of the bush, or, later on, mounts over the heaps of piled stones. How they got there is a mystery. You don't iind them in the middle of the bush, but directly the over- shadowing roof of the forest foliage is taken away, up they pop, like as many vegetable Jack-in-the-boxes. And with them, the little violets, purple and white and yellow, and the great dog violet, the wild oats, the wood anemone and the Mayflower. If you are very lucky, you may come across a trillium ; the purple one, be it well understood, not the white ; but this is of very rare occurrence. These are the spring treasures of the clearing, as the berries are its summer ones, and it hides them very carefully from view ; so carefully, indeed, that to a casual observer it presents much the same aspect in the first half of the year that it does in the fall, only it looks a little less dusty and brown. But it has not the slightest hesitation in obtruding its weeds on notice. Thistles and burdock and mullein tlu'ive on its bosom, as if they PRODUCTS OF THE CLEARING. WEEDS. 47 ^ould say "Yes ! here we are, and here we mean to stay. You (ion't like us ? That is a matter of taste. We are the natural pro- ducts of neglect, and this is our rightful place. By and by, we will overrun those beautiful fields of yours, and give you a deal of trouble, but in the meantime as wc stand here we have a beauty of our own, and possibilities that only lie latent because you do not think us worth your attention." I am not so sure tliat they are not right. I know that the wheat and grains that feed millions to-day have been developed by care and cultivation from coarse and worthless grasses ; that when left alone they degenerate into the condition from wliich they were raised. I know that some of our choicest flowers were originally weeds; that the crab tree is the distant ancestor of the Fameuse, and tlie sloe of the plum. There is a great deal to be got out of weeds if you only go the right way to work about it, and have the necessary j)atienee. I think, amongst other things, there is a lesson of charity. Just a few moments ago a tramp passed down the lane, and looked into the clearing. He was unsavory enough in appearance, and I doubt not would have been equally unsatisfactory to the olfactory nerves if I had been near enough, which I fortunately wasn't. There is no need to describe him in detail : tramps are not black swans, and a rarity on this continent ; or indeed any other ; and as they are, with rare exceptions, very much alike in their salient points, you may imagine what my tramp was like from those you liave seen for yourselves. He did not see me, and after leaning on the fence and spitting meditatively over it for a minute or two, passed wearily on. What was it I was talking about just now ? Weeds ? well ! here was a two-logged one. I wonder whether, if he had seen me, he would have said to me as that burdock was saying when ho came up, " we are the natural products of neglect, but we have possibilities that are only latent because you despise us, and do not think us w^orth your attention." And, again, if he were to say so, I am not quite sure that he would not be right. The tramp family is a large one, and embraces widely differing varieties. It is also an ancient and aristocratic one. The wise m ill' I i 1 \W.f .48 PRODUCTS OP THE CLEARINO. WKEDS. w .#t kin{^ of Itliaoiv, Ulysses " who saw uiaiiy niiiniiers of men and their cities " was one of its nieuibers. When the (irecian army was disbantletl after the capture of Troy, he did just what a lot of soldiers do in similar circumstances at the present day, and want on the tramp. He was just the fellow for it too ; unscrupulous and truculent at heart, and plausible in speech. I have no doubt he was au adept at wiling the pie of indigestion from the housekeepers of those days, as well as at e.vtracting a meal of cold meat and potatoes by menaces whenever he thought he could do it safely. And he never did a stroke of work, that I can find out. Coming further down the roll of time, we hud musical tramps, yclept Troubadours, and wandering minstrels ; religious tramps, such as the mendicant friars ; literary tramps, such as the poor scholars of the universities in the middle ages. Guttenberg was a fine example of the printing tramp ; Columbus of the nautical tramp ; and political tramps abound now. King and soldier, priest and scholar, musician and politician, discoverer and explorer, they have one and all had the same characteristics ; they have religiously abstained from doing any hard work themselves that they could possibly avoid, and they have got their living out of the fears or the foibles of the rest of the world ; and yet they have been held in honour. They have never been called bad names, or had the dog set at them. It is only the tramp par excellence, the avowed and unmitigated tramp, as represented by my friend of a few minutes ago, for whom such treatment is reserved. Well ! I suppose he merits it. He is dirty, lazy, (in the sense of having no settled occupation), brutal ; and it requires a great deal of Christianity, of which we have none of us any too much, to tolerate hira ; loving him as a man and a brother is far beyond our reach. But have you ever considered through what a sad and terrible experience he must have passed to become the wretch and outcast that he is ? There are tramps that have been such from the time almost that they were able t6 walk ; whose babyhood never knew a mother's love ; whose childhood was passed amidst blows and curses, picking its scanty sustenance out of the garbage of the gutter ; taught, and forced, to lie and to steal ; forced not I'KOUUCTS OF THE CLEARING. WEEDS. 4ft sense great much, eyoiid ad and ch and from byhood amidst arbage ;ed not merely by those to whom they belonged, but by the gi'«;at well-to- do world that would alioul thuia the means of uxistence on tio other conditions ; knowing nothing of Cfod and the Saviour except as couvenient names to round olf an oath ; nothing of virtue, and everything of vice — starved, cold, naked, without sympathy, with- out love, without means of enjoyment save in the gratilication uf the coar-sest sensual appetites. What else can they grow up to \mt what I have just seen i "Do men gather grapes otf thorns or tigs off thistles ?" And if some kind hand is stretched out to help tlieni ; to feed and educate them, and send them to some other country where there is more work for them to gain their living, what is the cry that is raised ^ You know it yourselves. "Keep your scum at home ; we want men, it is true, but they must be men with money." You needn't look indignant. That is what you say, only I have put the thing in plainer words than you care Id do. I have spoken of the born tramp: there are others that are not born, but forced into the ranks. Tramps that have been honest, hard-working men, and have lost their work through sickness, accident, or the competition of others, and, having lost it, have not lj(!en able to recover it again. Others, again, have wandered from their homes in the hopes of "bettering themselves," and have not done it. Some of these men give up the struggle at once, and commit suicide, as the man who falls overboard on a dark stormy night in mid-ocean will, after the lirst few instinctive struggles, perceive their futility, and cease from them. But the moat of tliem join the great army of tramps, from which, having once enlisted, there is no possibility of desertion. Perha])s you think that these cannot fall so far as the others. T am not sure that they don't fall further, with the memories of the past honest life gnawing at their hearts, and the prospects of the future that lies before them. Like Sir Bedivere in King Arthur, they "Hear the deep before them, and a cry behind." How, do. you suppose Tncifer felt, when he was driven out of heaven ? Suffering muv ranoble a man, but sutt'ering without prospect or hope of release makes him a devil. I am not pleading the cause of the tramp as he is : but such as he is, such has he been made by the world. Is there nothing m I In ill m i \m 60 PHOUIJCTK i)V I'HK CLEAIUNfi. WEEDH. :::!' significant in tlui fiirt, lliat as the army of tramps incroast's so do the numbers and tliu wraith of nulUonaiivs i Thi;ro never was a more infernal doctrine than tiie Vivv, Trach; maxim, sonnd economy though it may be " Buy in the cheapest mark(!t, and sell in the dearest," for it has led to the grinding down of the labourer, and the reduction of his wages to the lowest living point ; to shoddy and skimped work, and to the introduction of machinery by which one man can do the work of fifty men befor Oh, yes! wo are living fast; and we are dying fa^t too. T ouble is that we don't die sulUcientiy fast, and there is a superabundance of the human materials. We make astonishing progress in the arts and sciences, in civilization and luxury anil wealth, but we are sadly backward in the art of dying, and the most unreasonable people in this respect are the poor and the tramps who have been thought- fully provided with every inducement to shutUo oil this mortal coil, and persist in refusing to do it. It is jtlainly, their duty to do it. Somebody has got to die, and it is preposterous to suppose that we who are ctunfortaidy off, who can throw away a few thousands on a sup[)er or ball, and a few huudri'ds on a bouquet or a i)air of garters, who dress in broadcloth and fine lin '». and fare, some of us, sumptu(jusly, the rest of us comfortabl ry day, should be called upon to (piit, what, after all, is u j\y ])leasant life. Certainly we are our brother's keepers. We don't nudvC the mistake that Cain did, when he knocked Abel on the head. We keep our brother in a different way now : insist on his mortifying the flesh by abstinence ; remembering that it is hard for the rich to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, take the hardshi[) all on ourselves, and make the entrance easy for him ; and if he still needs further affectionate keeping, tax ourselves for gaols and reformatories, and penitentiaiios wherein to keep him more carefully. It is quite astonishing after all this, thath(! should be so ungrateful as torol), and steal, and commit an occasional murder, is not it ? WJiat was it the Inirdock said '{ '• We are the natural products of neglect, but we have possibilities that only lie latent because you do not think ns worth your atten- tion." It may bo so ; but it is a great deal easier to swear at the burdock as a useless and mischievous encumbrance, and to cut him down. •% IVly Cousins, the flnts. ^\ lIKlil!^ },'t)es an ant. lie has <^ot a dead tly about four tiines us bi^ as hiinsL'lf in his mouth, and ia projj;rL'3siu;,' backwards. pulUuj;, not pushiiii,'. I sujti)ose Sir John Lulibock would consider that a proof of iulijlli^'unco, a knowhnli^'u that stronj^th is butti'r iixpundod in [luUiiiii, a thini,' toward you than in ])Ushin«,' it from vou. "That ant," or pisiniro, as our ^reat grandmothers used to call him, Sir .T;»hii would say, "has evidently been indoctrinated in the rudimentary principles of statics and dynamics." And this would be a strong' aruument in the favor of the evolution of tin* monkey through a long series of stages from ])roto])lasm, and A' Ml lU from the immkey. But just wait a bit. I'resently you'll SCO that accomplished insect climb i)ainfully up a blade of grass, and, when ho has reached the top, stand on his hind legs and endeavor to thrust that dead tly into the jaws of space. I thought sol There he is poking tlie c-i'pus delicti, (for I am convinced that he assassinated that lly) to all quarters of the compass, as if expect- ing some heavenly visitant to relieve him of his burden. He'll be uncommonly lucky if the said heavenly visitant does not come down on him in the shape of a l»ird. And I am willing to make a small l);3t that this is not the tirsL time he has played this trick, and, if he gets home safely, it won't be the last. Now will any- body tell me that my little frien 1 is possessed of the reasoning faculty ? He knows as w dl as you or I do what a blade of grass is ; and he is perfectly aware that there is an end to it ; and yet, -iiiiiply because it happens to stand in what he fancies his way home, he must needs run up it, and stand waving himst'slf about likc! a lunatic on its summit until liis jaws achj with his burden, and lie descends a sadder, but not a wiser ant, for he will do the very same thing when the next occasion presents itself. "Go to the ant, tliou sluggard," says Solomon, as if one could learn anything from such an insensate proceeding as that I have just witnessed. Well! 1 don't know after all but what ho may have had some reasou for 1,1 i m I 52 MY COUSINS, THE ANTS. ii[;^ i his advice. I rather faucy that most of us who are in a hurty to attain some wished for end, are apt, to take the first way to it that presents itself, without much consideration as to where it may lead us. Perhaps we mayn't regard it as a way ; perhaps it may be an obstacle instead ; the result is much the same in either case ; we go at it without reflection, and we find ourselves "up a tree." There's a great deal of human nature in the brute creation, or of brute nature in the human creation ; which is it ? Now, when that ant came down to solid earth again, you will notice that he had lost his way. I never knew an ant yet that got out of sii^lit of his home, and the highways that lead to it that didn't lose his way. He finds it again, of course, by some mysterious process or other, or else by making successive casts in every direction till he comes across some landmark he knows, or meets with some other ant who is able to tell him ; but he loses it all the same for the time being, though he takes very good care not to lose the fiy. He is like an Englishman in that respect. It is very hard to make John Bull let go of any property that he has once managed to get hold of; as witness Egypt. Our cousins, the Yankees, arc the only people that I know of that have ever in- duced him to ))art with any of his worldly goods ; and they generally do it by what is vulgarly called "bamboozling," combined with a judiciously safe amount of bluster. They got a big slice of Maine in that way ; and another uf Oregon ; and I shouldn't be at all surprised if they get another of Alaska. But John Bull never loses his way ; the ant does. I have noticed the same peculiarity about many insects — humble-bees especially. Even when they are quite close to the entrance to tb«ir home they seem puzzled, and unable to find it for a few minutes. The carpenter-wasp is another instance. He wmII poke his head into half-a-dozen holes and crannies before he finds the right one, and this nearly every time he returns to his residence. It is a very curious peculiarity, and has often puzzled me. You may take a cat away in a bag, and get rid of it twenty, fifty, or a hundred miles from its accustomed domicile, and it will return. Or a dog. The homing pigeon flies back to its nest with marvelous accuracy and celerity. MY COUSINS, THE ANTS. i^ But these little creatures seem liable to a sudden loss of memory, or whatever is equivalent to it. Once get them out of their ordinary routine, and they are hopelessly at sea ; for a time at least. The meanest thing that has life evinces the possession of reasoning faculties which are totally distinct from what we call instinct. It is instinct which tcaclies the duckling to swim, and the chicken to peck directly it comas out of the shell; which leads the young of mammals, (including bibies) to suckle ; instinct probably, though not certainly, which dictates the form and fashion of their nests to the birds ; but besides and beyond this there are evidences. of the power of thought and reasoning in the lowest living thing which seems inseparable from the principle of life. I make no exceptions. The lower we go in the scale of animated creation, the fewer and fainter are the traces of this, till, when we come to the realm of botany, they almost entirely disappear. Yet even in plants they are not altogether wanting. It is something more than mere accident that leads a vine to send out rootlets in search of the nutriment to be derived from bones buried some distance from it, as it has been known to do ; that induced a tree, annoyed by the fretting against its trunk of a branch of another tree, to throw out an excrescence that grasped the offender tight, and strangled it. It seems hard to attribute such thingc as these, and others that I could name, to thought ; the thought of a tree ! But what then was it ? Certainly not accident, but purpose ; means adapted to a dehnite end ; and what is that but thought, or, if you take refuge in instinct, what is that again but unconscious thought '?. I take it, then, that the confusion of my little friend when he came down from his perilous elevation on the top of a blade of grass, was a suspension of the reasoning faculty, and hence an evidence that it previously existed. Instinct would have taken him straight home ; even though, by so taking him, it had for a time got him "up a tree." When he got down again he would have trudged off with his burden in the most unhesitating manner. But he didn't. First he ran a little bit one way ; then he ran a little bit another ; then he came back and went up the blade of '■ ■',-■<' 1 !' ■«r I g,1f\lw^ 54 MY COUSINS, THE ANTS. m ■ ' ' grass again, as if lie wanted to get a good look at tlie country. Plainly, he was vexed, and nervous, and would not reason out matters coolly. I have seen my hired girl, Blooniah, do much the same sort of thing when a bad-tempered cow originated an impromptu chaos of milk, milk-pail, milking maid, and barn-yard manure, with a single elevation of one of its hind legs. Bloomali was dazed : she did not know which to pick up first ; the milk, or the pail, or the manure, or herself ; and she tried to do all four things at once ; just like my little friend the ant thrusting his fly into the faces of the foar winds of heaven from the top of the blade of grass. When she finally got up, she did not know where to look, or where to gO; or even wh, j say. It's not often that you find a woman totally incapable Oi an energetic expression of her sentiments, but she was. She couldn't even say "gosh !" Now a man would not have hesitated for a moment, either in action or word. He would have seized a stick, or in default of that, the milk stool, and have left that cow under no mistaken imju'essiou as to his sentiments in the matter. And he would have been at no loss for a proper, or rather improper vocabidary either. Now this similarity of conduct of Bloomah and the ant under totally unexpected and annoying circumstances, shows a similarity in the reasoning powers of the two, contrasted as it is with the dissimi- larity of conduct of the higher masculine intelligence. Nobody would deny Bloomah the possession of reason because she looked and acted like a fool when she was swimming in milk, and when she recovered her erect position ; and nobody should deny the same faculty to the ant, because he looked also like a very foolish ant on the blade of gra.ss, and wIkmi he came down again. Bloomah recovered sooner than the ant did, and while the latter "returned to his muttons" and (dimbed up the grass again, she took very good care not to come near the cow that night, Init, seeing me laughing at her, hupressed me into the service, and made a fool of me. Now this was evidently a grade of intelligence much higher than that of the ant, to whom it never occurred to make me carry the fly home for him, and is a further ])roof of thought pervading the whole of the inferior living creation from woman down to MY COUSINS, THE ANTS. 65 again. , fool of liigher a cabbage-head, and in a gvadiuilly diminishing ratio. In unforeseen crises man alone has the perfect intelligence ; man alone is lord of himself; man alone knows what to do, and what to say. I wonder where the ant — he's gone now, and I can't ask him. I wonder where he got tliat Hy, I' eo'ildn't have died of its own accord, for it is the middle of siimmL'r, and no tly would think of shuttling off this mortal coil till tliu lir.'sL chills of autumn came, unless he was forced to do so. Just at this season the fly is particularly lively and wide awake. When lie was young, and not well acquainted with this wicked world, you could occasionally take advantage of his infantile artlessness and want of caution, and hit him a whack. If you attempt to do it at tliis period of his life, you only hit yourself. Now how did that ant get that fly ? It looks very much as if I had been the witness of an insect crime ; of an assassination, or rather the results of one ; an accessory to a foul murder It does not much matter now, for the ant is off, and I couldn't find him again if I were to try, but I should very much like to learn how he did it. It would be something useful to know next time musca domestica uses my nose as a parade ground when 1 want to go to sleep. It takes a great deal of serious thought and planning to circumvent a lively fly, and I'm beginning to think that perhaps I was wrong in assigning but II limited reasoning power to the pismire. 1 hope he will get home safe with his booty, and that he, and Mrs. ant, and the little cousins will all have a good supper to-night. I know it is wishing well to a man, I mean a pismire, whom I believe in my heart to have been a murderer, but then, remember, his victim was a fly. There are cases in which murder is only righteous retribution. I know some among my friends and ac{iuaintance whose taking off I should feel tempted to consider in that light, and I dare say you have the same experience. Very likely, this class will be enlarged, when this book comes to be criticized, if I hear my critics. Moreover I have no doubt that tliere are some who regard you aTid me in the same way ; to wit, that they would not be very indignant if we were assassinated. And that class also will be increased when this book comes to be read. Ji' ),« i 'H\ "Dulee et Deeopuin e ( O Paradise 1 The world is growing old ; Who would not be at rest, and free, Where love is never cold," but if the cliauGo of getting out of Kedar's tents right straight otV, and of being "at rest and free wliere love is never cold" were otfered at the conclusion of the hymn, there is not a man, woman, or child in the whole congregation that would jump at it. They would all say " Oh ! this is so sudilen, " like a young girl to a ))i'(.)posal of marriage, and want a little time to reply to the olfer. And the longer the time, the better they would l)e pleased. No ! we are none of us enamored witli the i»ro8i)cct of death, either for our country or any other ol)jcct, that is to say, of our own death. Anybody else's is a different matter. Man is a great liumljug. I don't say he is a hypocrite, because he really believes in himself; l)ut he is a humbug, and humbugs. There is nothing that catches him so soon as a high-sounding phrase ; what politicians call " a good cry. " He never stops to consider whether he believes in it, or not. And that, I take it, is the reason why there are so numy scoffers at the Christianity of the j^resent age, because its beliefs are only half, or sentimental beliefs, and the practical half is so often absent. The popular religion is an emotional one of noble thoughts, fine aspirations, eloquent discourses, rapturous hymns and music, pomp and flowers ; and because it is an emotional one M 4 fi. ,1 58 " DULOE ET DP:(J0UUM EST. and cannot be ke])t up unintevmittingly, it is reserved tor Sundays, and laid aside on week days. It is not hypocrisy, heaven forbid! It is real enough so tar as it goes, but it does not go lar enough ; and in that it is unreal. The man who i'eels his bosom tilled with love and charity to his neighbor on the Sunday, will pay his workwomen starvation wages on the Saturday following, and will spend the intervening period in trying to get out of his fellow-men the very utmost he can without infringing on the strict letter of the law. "1 see the better things and a])prove of them," said the old Roman poet, "1 follow the worse." The approval of the. better is as sincere and real as tin })ractice of the worse. Why ? Because, unconsciously, we have oidy a half belief at the bottom of our hearts in what we say. No ! I am not going to sing the praises of ]»atriotism, or any other of the virtues that are more on our lips than in our heart, and in our professions more than in our practice. Stretched at my ease on a nice little rug of moss, and having before my eyes the irritating example of the busy ant, I am meditating' a laudation of laziness, about which there can be no humbug, as it is not generally con- ceded to be an estimable ([uality. But before I begin to do so, let me remind you of what I saiil about energy and indomitable per- severance, viz : that when carried to e.x^cess they become vices. Simihirly, (ami don't you forget it) laziness, which is a very good and estimable thing in itself, becomes totally reprehensible if you indulge in it too much. In that, it is like everything else in the world, wickedness excepted, concerning which the same law holds good for all, that it is the excess which constitutes the sin and not the u ;e. I don't claim any originality for the remark. Solomon said the same long ago, when he observed "Ther(^, is a time for all things," and St. Paul reiterated it afterwards in the declaration "All things are lawful ; but all things are not convenient." Now if these authorities are to bo relied on, it is manifest that there is a time when laziness is lawful, and also a time when it is not con- venient ; and that is tantamount to saying that it is good when not pushed to excess. Some people don't think so. The ant does not believe in it ; '" DULCE ET DECORUM EST." 59 neither doos my wife ; noithei- do women generally us a rule. They are always in motion themselves ; (I really don't see how the world would get along it' they weren't), and th3y want everyboily and everything else to be in motion too. In their eyes, idleness of any kind is the eighth, and worst, of the seven tleadly sins, and an unfortunate male that comes within the swooj) of a feminine whirl- )H)ol has just simply got to do something, lie must not take an after dinner nap ; he must not sit and smokn ; he must not sit and read ; sitting is an abomination, and lying down is worse than heresy, lie must stir about and do something, no matter what ; and if he do, isn't kiKjw what to do, lie must still stir about till he does. If Pi'ovidence had not (Uidowed man with a blessed mulish and (jbstinite disposition, woman woidd have worn out creation long before the appointed time. Bhjoniah is just as bad as my wife. If sho. sees me unoecui)ied, she always finds out something to be done. Slie wants a pail of water, anl the hired mm is out in the garden ; or else s!ie wants woo.l, and there is nobody about to saw it; or the pig has got in the potato patch ; or, if she can't invent anything else, "The Missus is a looking for you. Sir." Anyhow, I've got to stir ; anl stirring on a hoi day is provocative of perspiration and profanity. Xow that is all wrong ; it is uncomfortal)lL' ; it is unnatural, and it is unseientihc; uncomfcn'table, as everybjdy knows that has ever had a woman in th.', house wli.m In wiuN to be (j^uiet ; lumatural as the action of our own he.irts may teach us. We have a fancy that our very lives depen 1 on tint sanguineous little organ keeping up its work without intermission ; that, in fact, if the heart stop3 beating we die. II' we consider that that is tantamount to ex])3cting it to kee[) on working wiLh')ut intermission for perhajis seventy or eighty years at a stretch, it will be readily seen what an extravagant demand we mak.; on it. \\\[ the truth is thai our hearts do no such thiu'^- ; they hivii lirs of li/imss — j)hysiologists mil it "relaxation of th >. muscles," — ibout seventy tiiuis a minute in a healthy adult, and the consei|uenc;! is that they get a rest of eight hours in the twenty-four. "N't* mirried mm ever gets thai. Moreover, to object to laziness is uuscieatilic. A high authority I I ''J '■'4 M I iM Wf to "DULCK ET DECORUM EST." ! if. has recently discovered that the longer a man sleeps in the twenty- four hours, the longer he will live ; so that if ho were to sleep the whole time he wouldn't die at all. Herein lies the secret of immortality, and in order to prevent man from making use of it when discovered, animals like my wife Polly, and my servant girl Bloomah, were created. If there were no women, we should all go peacefully to sleep ; there would b3 no wars, no strikes, no famines, no doctors, lawyers or politicians ; no programmes of committees of public instruction ; no schools, no prisons, no taverns, no nothing. A blessed and paaceful repose would reign in the world, and a quiet, only broken by snoring. Just think what a Utopia would exist under the reign of pure and perfect laziness ! Wouldn't that be "dulce" ? Wouldn't it be "decorum" ? A whole world reposing under its blankets and counterpanes, snugly tucked in and snoring the snore of the just ? What is that you object ? That there would be no civilization, no progress, no heroic deeds, no noble aspirations ? and pray who would want them ? It is your unquiet body, who is always poking up himself and other people, that makes progress and all the rest of it necessary ; creates competition, and in so doing, is the originator of combines, mono- polies, and election campaigns. Alan was born to be lazy ; it was only when he was turned out of Elen that he had to begin to work ; and if Eve had been asleep, as she ought to have been, instead of rambling about, falling in with ser])ents, he would never have had to leave it. The most famous (and the most sensible) beauty in history, is The Sleeping Beauty, who was all right, and everybody and thing about her was all right too, till the "fairy-footed Prince" came along and woke her with a kiss. Misguided young man ! I fancy that in after years there were times when he bitterly repented of that kias. "And o'er the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim. Beyond the night, across the day, Through all the world she followed him ;" Th ere was no getting away from her after she had once woke up. flftcT> Sunset. ^ HERE is one great drawback to a clearing, so far as I am cou- earned, in the absence of shade ; for I don't call that shade which is atlbrded by a four foot stump, to avail yourself of which you have to sit on the ground and submit to be walked over by ants and spiders, and other creeping things. At the same time it must be remembered that I am but a unit of the unnumbered habitues of the place, and that the birds and chipmunks, the mice, centipedes and other insect populations, lind shade enough and to spare. Since then the ideal of government is the greatest good for the greatest number, it cannot properly be said that the fact of my being obliged to sit and brown in the sun whenever I want to muse in the clearing is a drawback to it. There is a great deal of philosophy in this retlectiou, and, viewed in a right light, it is one that is eminently conducive to contentment under adverse circum- stances. You recollect the fable of the Boys and the Frogs : how the latter, on being pelted with stones every time they popped their noses above the surface of the pond, appealed to the sense of justice in their persecutors, and adjured them to rellect that what was fun to the terrestrials was death to the amphibious partners in the joke. The statement was not strictly true, or, indeed, true at all, for that matter. I have thrown lots of stones at fross m the water ilf my time, and have known plenty of other people that have done so too, but I never hit one myself, and I never knew anybody that did. Do you ? Now, it is an impossibility to kill a frog by missing him with a stone, so that the croaking orator misrepresented matters as thoroughly as any party newspaper, or stump politician, ever does, and his appeal might very properly have been ruled out as not founded in fact ; but I want you to observe that, supposing for the moment it had been, the true question at issue was not whether it was a matter of life or death 'It:'. *v1 ,f I ' .^* 62 AFTF.R SUNSET. for the frogs, but wluitliL-r Uiuy wiim in th(! inajurity or not. If they were, then they were jiistiliiid iu prote.sting ; but if they were not, then the i)rincii)le of the greatest good for the greatest number .should have been heUl to i»revail, and the deaths of the frog minority more than counterlxdanced by the fun aeeruing Irom them to the [)uerile maj(jrily. Obviously, therehjre, the frogs should have been conlenti'd witli their situation, and if they de])lored anything, should have felt bad about it every time one of their number eseajtod having his brains knocked out ; ol»viously, also, I have no right to call the absence of shade in the clearing a drawback, and t!ie proper antl philosophical course is to accept the situation as it is, and make myself as comfortal)le as I can under the circumstances, I geiier.illy do ; with the aid of an umbrella. It looks undignilii'd and uupliih)-iO))hical, 1 admit, to sit on a stump for an hour logeth-r holding a big cotton uinl)r(,'lla over onci's head, and it's just a little trying on the arms, nvui^, que, voidez-vons ! As the Ivukuana chief said to JNIacumazahn, no man can put out the sun. "The sun is sivouger than man who looks at him." Xow, that you can't ])Ut out the sun is no reason for being put out yourself. That is a very good thing to remember when yon are arguing with your wife. Hut the day comes to an end sometime, as everything else, you and [ included, will do, and then the little breezes that have been aslee[) in tlie nursery on the top of the trees wake up, and their sisters that have \m\\\\ dozing in the soft mosses and the arms of the violets and si)eedwells d(j the same, and there are gentle whisp(!rs calling to each other far overhead in the forest, and a rippling murmur breathing responsive in the grasses i)eneath. The robin at the edge of the clearing is singing his mate and little ones to sleep, prejiaratory to going to bed himself on a near branch of the elm or maple, and the frogs begin their love songs in a not altogether unpleasant whistling trel)le, with the bull frog playing the bass accompaniment. Did you ever catch froggie when he goes a,-wooing, and whistles as he goes ? I have ; but only very rarely ; directly h(! becomes conscious of an illegitimate audience, he pockets his instrument in an mstant, and looks as innocent of AFTER SUNSET. music as if he belonged to a Ladies' Matinee Musicale." What ia his instrument i" Well I You would never guess it, but when liana is in love, he becomes a bagj)ii)er. Where he gets it from, or how he does it, 1 d(jn't i)rofess to know, but he has a thin semi- translucent membrane which he ])ulf,s out in the form of u bag under his chin, and from the air contained in it he draws out the lung whistling trill that you Ih-ar in the spring evenings and summer nights. It was a long time belbre I found this out ; 1 thought till then that frogs eou Id do nothing but croak, and that the whistling sound proceeded from li/