A hearty welcome being offered to the Kentish and Surrey folks just arrived, they gave some account of themselves. They had all suffered from want of demand for their labour; an evil which had gone on to increase in the face of the promises that had been made to them about providing for all who were out of work on farms prepared for their advantage alone. A young labourer from the parish of A—— stated that his father and mother and their seven children had been located on such a farm by Mr. Fellowes, with sixty other families; that it was difficult to provide for all the young people as they grew up, and would become more so still when they came to have families of their own, unless indeed they spent their whole lives in getting food and food only. Mr. Fellowes was now anxious to take in more paupers upon his farm, and was unwilling, in order to make room for them, to turn out labourers upon the parish where there were already too many; and he had therefore advised the sons and daughters of his home-settlers to lose no opportunity of getting well placed either in Canada or Australia. “So,” concluded the speaker, “I moved off to make room for two elderly folks, seeing, as Mr. Fellowes himself said, that I can raise a better living with less toil here than there, and be much sooner free; and so, here I am. But Mr. Jackson will tell you all about it, when he comes, better than I can.”
It was now Frank’s turn to explain that the clergyman and his family were really coming, and to read that part of his long letter which concerned the present company.—He had often thought of coming, the gentleman wrote, and had nearly made up his mind to it before the invitation arrived from some of his former flock; and the inducements held out by them had quite decided him.—And now what cheering, what long and loud congratulation followed!
“What are you shaking your head for, Castle?” inquired one who sat opposite to him. “You cannot altogether help smiling; so why spoil sport with shaking your head? What are you sorry for?”
“I am not sorry. I am very glad. I am only afraid of Mr. Jackson’s growing sorry, and that in a very little while. After all, you see, this is not the old country.”
“No more is the coat on your back an old coat; and how is it the worse for that?”
“Tush! Stuff! One’s coat has nothing to do with one’s happiness, as one’s country has. England is one’s home after all.”
“Not mine, I am sure. It was a dreary place enough to me,—nothing like a home. I and mine were neglected or oppressed at every turn; not because anybody meant us harm; but like starving people who happen to be just so many more than are needed. Here I have all I want without begging or returning thanks; and this is my home. Wherever I have a dwelling and food, wherever I have comfort and safety within doors, and can step abroad among friends, there is my home. Put me under a parish roof in the very spot I was born in, and I should feel like a banished man. Set me down independent, with my family about me, in any part of the world,—in the middle of a forest or on the wildest sea-shore, and, be it north, south, east, or west, that place is a home to me.”
Castle still shook his head, saying that there was no place like England to an Englishman.
“Aye; if you could be as well off in England as you are here, I grant you. But just answer me this,—if you and your family could be set down this very day before the workhouse at A—, in the condition in which you drove away from it, would you go?”
Castle stole a glance at his children and hesitated to reply.—To spare his father, Frank observed that Mr. Jackson had a good deal to say on this subject, and proceeded to finish the letter, the auditory showing by their silence during its progress and their enthusiasm at its conclusion, that they were partly sensible of the greatness of the occasion, as well as prepared to enter into his opinions and feelings. Several of them, besides Frank and others who personally knew Mr. Jackson, felt that a new era in the prosperity of the settlement at Dairy Plains was likely to begin from this day;—for their correspondent might be said to be already among them.