“To return to the subject of flowers,” said Mrs. Bond, “we have been wondering if the people’s love of them is not a kind of a reflection of the land itself. I have never seen so many kinds and such quantities of wild flowers.”
“That is true,” agreed Miss Ashton. “We have been reveling especially in the profusion of wild roses along the roads.”
“They tell me,” said Jim, turning slightly toward Mrs. Bond, “that in the proper season there are such quantities of arbutus here, or Mayflower as some call it, that it has been adopted as the emblem of Nova Scotia, along with the motto, ‘We bloom amid the snows.’ It is gathered and sold in all public places; and everybody wears or carries some as long as it lasts. Every office, they say, every store, every house has its bouquet of arbutus.”
“What a pretty custom!” exclaimed Mrs. Bond.
“This is Windsor,” said the driver, as they entered a lovely town on the river Avon. “It was an Acadian village; and at Fort Edward, which was built after the country fell into the hands of the British, were drawn up the plans for the expulsion of the Acadians.”
They drove up the lovely wooded slopes where King’s College was established in 1787, and where it continued as the oldest colonial university in the British Empire until very recently, when it was removed to Halifax. A private school for boys still uses the original chapel for its religious exercises.
“A most famous judge of Nova Scotia, Thomas Haliburton by name,” went on the driver as they left the old buildings behind, “was also quite an author, under the nom de plume of Sam Slick. His best known book is called ‘The Clock Maker.’ It is regarded as a classic, and its humor is said to rival that of Dickens himself in the Pickwick Papers. This is his house, which we are approaching, and where he wrote his books. It is known as the ‘Sam Slick House’ and is open to the public.”
The party was met at the low porch (upon which was an old-fashioned scraper for removing mud from one’s shoes) by the hostess, a charming woman, who showed them through the house. The living room, into which the outside door opened, was paneled in oak halfway to the ceiling, and upon it were hung various old-fashioned articles.
“What is this for?” asked Nancy, examining a covered brass pan, at the end of a long wooden handle.
“That is a warming pan,” explained the hostess. “They used to put hot coals inside, and run the pan under the bedclothes a few times to take the chill off the sheets before one went to bed in severe weather. You know in those days there was no steam heat; and most bedrooms were entirely unheated.”