The evening is dry and clear, with no trace of rain in the atmosphere, or we would be surrounded with clouds of those awful critturs, the musquitoes, which the cattle bring home. These are often a dreadful annoyance, nothing but a thick cloud of smoke dispelling them, and that only for a time. At night they are particularly a nuisance, buzzing and stinging unceasingly through the silent hours, forbidding all thought of sleep till the dawn shows them clinging to the walls and windows, wearied and bloated with their night's amusement. Those who are sufficiently acclimated suffer comparatively little—'tis the rich blood of the stranger that the musquito loves, and emigrants, on the first season, especially in low marshy situations, suffer extremely from their attacks.
Mary Gordon having now gone with her pails to meet her milky charge, while her mother arranges the dairy within, Helen comes to set me on my way. Again we meet the frolickers returning rather earlier than is usual on such occasions; but there was sickness at the dwelling where they had been, which caused them to disperse soon after they had accomplished the "raising." Kindly greetings passed between us; for here, in this little world of ours, we have hardly room for the petty distinctions and pettier strifes of larger communities. We are all well acquainted with each other, and know each other's business and concerns as well as our own. There is no concealment of affairs. This, however, saves a vast deal of trouble—people are much easier where there is no false appearance to be kept up; and in New Brunswick there is less of "behind the scenes" than in most places. Many a bright eye glances under Helen's shadowy hat: and, see, one gallant axe-man lingers behind the others—he pauses now by the old birch tree—I know he is her lover, and in charity to their young hearts I must allow her to turn, while we proceed onward.
The fire-flies now gleam through the air like living diamonds, and the evening star has opened her golden eye in the rich deep azure of the sky. Our home stands before us, with its white walls thrown in strong relief by the dark woods behind it: and here, on this adjoining lot, lives our neighbour who is ill—he who to-day has had the "barn raising." It would be but friendly to call and enquire for him. The house is one of the best description of log buildings. The ground floor contains two large apartments and a spacious porch, which extends along the front, has the dairy in one end and a workshop in the other, that most useful adjunct to a New Brunswick dwelling, where the settlers are often their own blacksmiths and carpenters, as well as splint pounders and shingle weavers. The walls are raised high enough to make the chamber sufficiently lofty, and the roof is neatly shingled. As we enter, an air of that undefinable English ideality—comfort—seems diffused, as it were, in the atmosphere of the place. There is a look of retirement about the beds, which stand in dim recesses of the inner apartment, with their old but well-cared-for chintz hangings, differing from the free uncurtained openness of the blue nose settler's couch; a publicity of sleeping arrangements being common all over America, and much disliked by persons from the old countries, a bed being a prominent piece of furniture in the sitting and keeping rooms of even those aristocratic personages, the first settlers. The large solid-looking dresser, which extends nearly along one side of the house, differs too from the light shelf of the blue nose, which rests no more crockery than is absolutely necessary. Here there is a wide array of dishes, large and small—old China tea-cups, wisely kept for show,—little funny mugs, curious pitchers, mysterious covered dishes, unearthly salad bowls, and a host of superannuated tea-pots. Above them is ranged a bright copper kettle, a large silvery pewter basin, and glittering brazen candlesticks, all brought from their English home, and borne through toil and danger, like sacred relics, from the shrine of the household gods. The light of the fire is reflected on the polished surface of a venerable oaken bureau, whose unwieldy form has also come o'er the deep sea, being borne along the creeks and rivers of New Brunswick, and dragged through forest paths to its present resting place. In the course of its wanderings by earth and ocean it has become minus a foot, the loss of which is supplied by an unsmoothed block of pine, the two forming not an inapt illustration of their different countries. The polished oaken symbol of England receiving assistance in its hour of need from the rude but hardy pine emblem of New Brunswick. The room is cool and quiet; the young people being outside with a few who have lingered after the frolic. By the open window, around which a hop vine is enwreathed, in memory of the rose-bound casements of England, and through which comes a faint perfume from the balm of gilead trees, sits the invalid, seemingly refreshed with the pleasant things around him. He has been suffering from rheumatic fever caught in the changeful days of the early spring, when the moist air penetrates through nerve and bone, and when persons having the least tendency to rheumatism, or pulmonary complaints, cannot use too much caution. At no other season is New Brunswick unhealthy; for the winter, although cold, is dry and bracing. The hot months are not so much so as to be injurious, and the bland breezes of the fall and Indian summer are the most delightful that can be imagined.
Stephen Morris had come from England, like the generality of New Brunswick settlers, but lightly burthened with worldly gear—but gifted with the unpurchasable treasures of a strong arm and willing spirit, that is, a spirit resolved to do its best, and not be overcome with the difficulties to be encountered in the struggle of subduing the mighty wilderness. While he felled the forest, his wife, accustomed in her own country to assist in all field labours, toiled with him in piling and fencing as well as in planting and reaping. Even their young children learned to know that every twig they lifted off the ground left space for a blade of grass or grain; beginning with this, their assistance soon became valuable, and the labour of their hands in the field soon lightened the burthen of feeding their lips. Slowly and surely had Stephen gone onward, keeping to his farm and minding nothing else, unlike many of the emigrants, who, while professing to be farmers, yet engage in other pursuits, particularly lumbering, which, although the mainspring of the province and source of splendid wealth to many of the inhabitants, has yet been the bane of others. Allured by the visions of speedy riches it promises, they have neglected their farms, and engaged in its glittering speculations with the most ardent hopes, which have far oftener been blighted than realised. A sudden change in trade, or an unexpected storm in the spring, having bereft them of all, and left them overwhelmed in debt, with neglected and ruined lands, with broken constitutions, (for the lumberer's life is most trying to the health,) and often too with broken hearts, and minds all unfitted for the task of renovating their fortune. Their life afterwards is a bitter struggle to get above water; that tyrant monster, their heavy debt, still chaining them downwards, devouring with insatiate greed their whole means, for interest or bond, until it be discharged; a hard matter for them to accomplish—so hard that few do it, and the ruined lumberer sinks, to the grave with its burthen yet upon him. Stephen had kept aloof from this, and now surveyed,
"——With pride beyond a monarch's spoil,
His honest arm's own subjugated toil."
A neighbour of his had come out from England at the same time he had done and commenced farming an adjoining lot, but he soon wearied of the slow returns of his land and commenced lumbering. For a time he went on dashingly, the merchants in town supplying him freely with provisions and everything necessary to carry on his timber-making—whilst Stephen worked hard and lived poor, he enjoyed long intervals of ease and fared luxuriantly. But a change came: one spring the water was too low to get his timber down, the next the freshet burst at once and swept away the labour of two seasons, and ere he got another raft to market, the price had fallen so low that it was nearly valueless. He returned dispirited to his home and tried to conceal himself from his creditors, the merchants whom the sale of his timber was to have repaid for the supplies they had advanced; but his neglected fields showed now but a crop of bushes and wild laurel, or an ill-piled clearing, with a scanty crop of buck-wheat; while Stephen Morris looked from his window on fair broad fields from whence the stumps had all disappeared, where the long grass waved rich with clover-flowers between, and many a tract that promised to shine with autumn wreaths of golden grain; leaflets and buds were close and thick on the orchard he had planted, and where erst the wild-bush stood now bloomed the lovely rose. On a green hill before him stood the lofty frame of the building this evening raised, with all its white tracery of beam and rafter, a new but welcome feature in the landscape. A frame barn is the first ambition of the settler's heart; without one much loss and inconvenience is felt. Hay and grain are not stacked out as in other countries, but are all placed within the shelter of the barn; these containing, as they often do, the whole hay crop, besides the grain and accommodation for the cattle, must, of course, be of large dimensions, and are consequently expensive. With this Stephen had proceeded surely and cautiously as was his wont. In the winter he had hauled logs off his own land to the saw-mill to be made into boards. He cut down with much trouble some of the ancient pines which long stood in the centre of his best field, and from their giant trunks cut well-seasoned blocks, with which he made shingles in the stormy days of winter. Thus by degrees he provided all the materials for enclosing and roofing, and was not obliged, as many are, to let the frame, (which is the easiest part provided, and which they often raise without seeming even to think how they are to be enclosed,) stand for years, like a huge grey skeleton, with timbers all warped and blackened by the weather. Steadily as Stephen had gone on, yet as the completion of his object became nearer he grew impatient of its accomplishment, and determined to have his barn ready for the reception of his hay harvest; and for this purpose he worked on, hewing at the frame in the spring, reckless of the penetrating rain, the chill wind, or the damp earth beneath, and thus, by neglect of the natural laws, he was thrown upon the couch of sickness, where he lay long. This evening, however, he was better, and sat gazing with pleased aspect on the scene, and then I saw his eyes turn from the fair green hill and its new erection to where, in the hollow of a low and marshy spot of land, stood the moss-grown logs and sunken walls of the first shelter he had raised for his cattle—his old log barn, which stood on the worst land of the farm, but when it was raised the woods around were dark and drear, and he knew not the good soil from the bad; yet now he thought how, in this unseemly place, he had stored his crop and toiled for years with unfailing health, where his arm retained its nerve, unstrung neither by summer's heat nor winter's cold, when the voice of his son, a tall stripling, who had managed affairs during his illness, recalled him to the present, which certainly to him I thought might wear no unfavourable aspect. He had literally caused the wilderness to blossom as the rose, and saw rising around him not a degenerate but an improving race, gifted far beyond himself with bright mental endowments, the spontaneous growth of the land they lived in, and which never flourish more fairly than when engrafted on the old English stem; that is, the children of emigrants, or the Anglo-bluenoses, have the chance of uniting the high-aspiring impulses of young America to the more solid principles of the olden world, thus forming a decided improvement in the native race of both countries. But Stephen has too much of human nature in him not to prefer the past, and I saw that the sunbeams of memory rested brightly on the old log barn, obscuring the privations and years of bitter toil and anxiety connected with it, and dimming his eyes to ought else, however better; so that I left him to his meditations, and after a step of sixty rods, the breadth of the lot, I am once more at home, where, as it is now dark, we will close the door and shut out the world, to this old country prejudice has made us attach a small wooden button inside, the only fastening, except the latch, I believe, in the settlement. Bolts and bars being all unused, the business of locksmith is quite at a discount in the back woods, where all idea of a midnight robbery is unknown; and yet, if rumour was true, there were persons not far from us to whom the trade of stealing would not be new. One there was of whom it was said, that for this reason alone was New Brunswick graced with his presence. He had in his own country been taken in a daring act of robbery, and conveyed in the dark of night to be lodged in gaol. The officers were kind-hearted, and, having secured his hands, allowed his wife to accompany him, themselves walking a short distance apart. At first the lady kept up a most animated conversation, apparently upbraiding the culprit for his conduct. He answered her, but by degrees he seemed so overcome by her remarks that he spoke no more, and she had all the discourse to herself. Having arrived at their destination, the officers approached their prisoner, but he was gone, the wife alone remained. The darkness of the night bad favoured his escape while she feigned to be addressing him, and, having thus defeated the law, joined her spouse, and made the best of their way to America, where the workings of the law of kindness were exemplified in his case. His character being there generally unknown, he was treated and trusted as an honest man, and he broke not his faith. The better feelings were called into action; conscientiousness, though long subdued, arose and breathed through his spirit the golden rule of right.
The days in America are never so short in winter as they are in Europe, nor are they so long in summer, and there is always an hour or two of the cool night to be enjoyed ere the hour of rest comes. Our evening lamp is already lighted, and our circle increased by the presence of the school-mistress.
Although in this country the local government has done much towards the advancement of schools, yet much improvement requires to be made—not in their simple internal arrangements, for which there is no regular system, but in the more important article of remuneration. The government allows twenty pounds a year to each school; the proprietors, or those persons who send their children to the school, agreeing to pay the teacher a like sum at least (though in some of the older settled parts of the country from forty to fifty pounds is paid by them); as part payment of this sum providing him with board, &c., &c., and this alone is the evil part of the scheme; this boarding in turn with the proprietors, who keep him a week or a month in proportion to the number of the pupils they send, and to make up their share of the year, for which term he is hired, as his engagement is termed—an expression how derogatory to the dignity of many a learned dominie? From this cause the teacher has no home, no depository for his books, which are lost in wandering from place to place; and if he had them, no chance for study: for the log-house filled with children and wheels is no fit abode for a student. This boarding system operates badly in many ways. The nature of the blue nose is still leavened with that dislike of coercive measures inherited from their former countrymen, the Yankees. It extends to their children, and each little black-eyed urchin, on his wooden bench and dog-eared dilworth in hand, must be treated by his teacher as a free enlightened citizen. But even without this, where is there in any country a schoolmaster daring enough to use a ratan, or birch rod, to that unruly darling from whose mother he knows his evening reception will be sour looks, and tea tinged with sky-blue, but would not rather let the boy make fox-and-geese instead of, ciphering, say his lesson when he pleased, and have cream and short-cake for his portion. Another disagreeable thing is, that fond and anxious as they are for "larning," they have not yet enough of it to appreciate the value of education. The schoolmaster is not yet regarded as the mightiest moral agent of the earth; the true vicegerent of the spirit from above, by which alone the soul is truly taught to plume her wings and shape her course for Heaven. And in this country, where operative power is certain wealth, he who can neither wield axe or scythe may be looked on with a slight shade of contempt: but this only arises from constant association with the people; for were the schoolmaster more his own master, and less under their surveillance by having a dwelling of his own, his situation otherwise would be comfortable and lucrative.
The state of school affairs begins to attract much notice from the legislature, and no doubt the present system of school government will soon be improved. A board of education is appointed in each county, whose office it is to examine candidates for the office of parish school teacher, and report to the local governor as to their competency, previous to his conferring the required license. Trustees are also appointed in the several parishes, who manage the other business connected with them, such as regulating their number, placing masters where they are most wanted, and receiving and apportioning the sum appropriated to their support, or encouragement, by the government. Mr. B. held this situation, and frequent were the visits of the lords of the birch to our domicile, either asking redress for fancied wrongs, or to discuss disputed points of school discipline.
The female teachers are situated much the same, save that many of them, preferring a quiet home to gain, pay for their board out of their cash salary, and give up that which they could otherwise claim from the people. This, however, is by no means general, and the present mistress has come to stay her term with us, although having no occasion for the school, yet wishing to hasten the march of intellect through the back woods, we paid towards it, and boarded the teacher, as if we had. Grace Marley, who held this situation now, was a sweet wild-flower from the Emerald Isle, with spirits bright and changeful as the dewy skies of her own loved Erin. Her graceful but fully rounded figure shows none of those anatomical corners described by Captain Hamilton in the appearance of the native American ladies. Her dark eye speaks with wondrous truth the promptings of her heart, and her brown hair lies like folds of satin on her cheek, from which the air of America has not yet drank all the rose light. From her fairy ear of waxen white hangs a golden pendant, the treasured gift of one far distant. Before her, on the table, lies Chambers' Journal, which always found its way a welcome visitant to our settlement, soon after the spring fleet had borne it over the Atlantic. She has been reading one of Mrs. Hall's stories, which, good as they are, are yet little admired by the Irish in America. The darker hues which she pourtrays in the picture of their native land have become to them all softened in the distance; and by them is their country cherished there, as being indeed that beautiful ideal "first flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea." A slight indignant flush, raised by what she had been reading, was on her brow as I entered; but this gave place to the heart-crushing look of disappointment I had often seen her wear, as I replied in the negative to her question, if there was a letter for her. From where, or whom she expected this letter I knew not, yet as still week after week passed away and brought her none, the same shade had passed over her face.