“But you allow him to perform tasks of the most menial kind. What is he now better than a hedge-carpenter; and I suppose you allow him to chop, too?”
“Most assuredly I do. That pile of logs in the cart there was all cut by him after he had left study yesterday,” was the reply.
“I would see my boys dead before they should use an axe like common labourers.”
“Idleness is the root of all evil,” said the captain. “How much worse might my son be employed if he were running wild about the streets with bad companions.”
“You will allow this is not a country for gentlemen or ladies to live in,” said the lady.
“It is the country for gentlemen that will not work, and cannot live without, to starve in,” replied the captain, bluntly; “and for that reason I make my boys early accustom themselves to be usefully and actively employed.”
“My boys shall never work like common mechanics,” said the lady, indignantly.
“Then, madam, they will be good for nothing as settlers; and it is a pity you dragged them across the Atlantic.”
“We were forced to come. We could not live as we had been used to do at home, or I never would have come to this horrid country.”
“Having come hither you would be wise to conform to circumstances. Canada is not the place for idle folks to retrench a lost fortune in. In some parts of the country you will find most articles of provision as dear as in London; clothing much dearer, and not so good, and a bad market to choose in.”