Then another crying evil in Canada and in the States is the rage for dress. An Irish girl no sooner gets a modicum of wages than all her thoughts are to go to chapel or church as fine or finer than her mistress. Nearly every servant-girl in the large towns has a ridicule (that must be the proper way of spelling it), a bustle, a parasol, an expensive shawl, and a silk gown, and fine bonnet, gloves, and a white pocket-handkerchief. The men are not so aspiring, and usually don on Sundays a blue coat and brass buttons, white pantaloons, white gloves, and a good fur cap in winter, or a neat straw hat or brilliant beaver in summer. The waistcoat is nondescript, but the boots are irreproachable. A cigar has nearly replaced the pipe in the streets.
I will defy a short-sighted person to distinguish her nursery-maid from her own sister at a little distance; and, being somewhat afflicted that way myself, I frequently nod to a well-dressed soubrette, thinking she is at least a leading member of the aristocracy of the town; and this is the more amusing, as in all colonial towns and in the haute societé of the Republic very considerable magnificence is affected, and a rage for rank and pseudo-importance is not a little the order of the day. "Nothing," says a distinguished writer upon that most frivolous of all threadbare subjects, etiquette, "nothing is more decidedly the sign of a vulgar-born or a vulgar-bred person than to be ready to practise the art of cutting." I therefore bow to the well-dressed grisettes, upon the principle of avoiding to be thought vulgar in mixed society by cutting a lady of tremendous rank; as I would rather take a cook for a Countess, or a chambermaid for an Honourable, than be guilty of so much rudeness.
You must not smile, gentle reader, and say cooks are often handsomer than Countesses, or chambermaids prettier than Honourables; I am like the old man of the Bubbles of Brunnen, insensible to anything but the beauties of nature. Neither must you think we have no Countesses nor Honourables in Canada. The former are in truth raræ aves, but the latter—why, every change of ministry creates a batch of them.
CHAPTER II.
The Emigrant and his Prospects.
Those who really wish Canada well desire it to become a second Britain, and not a mere second Texas. Those who wish it evil, and these comprise the restless, unprovided race of politicians under whose incessant agitation Canada has so long groaned, desire its Texian annexation to the already overgrown States in its vicinity.
That it may become a second Britain and hold the balance of power on the continent of America is my prayer, and the prayer too of one who entertains no enmity towards the people of the United States, but who admires their unceasing exertions in behalf of their country, who would admire their institutions, based as they are upon those of England, if the grand design of Washington had been carried out, and perfect freedom of thought and of action had been secured to the people, instead of a slavish awe of the mob, an absolute dread of the uneducated masses, a sovereign contempt of the opinion of the world in accomplishing any design for the aggrandizement of the Union, the most despotic and degrading oppression of all who presume to hold religious opinions at variance with those of the masses, and the chained bondsman in a land of liberty!
To guard the respectable settler, who has a character at stake, and a family with some little capital to lay out to better advantage than he can at home, against the grievous and often fatal errors which have been propagated for sinister motives by needy adventurers who have written about Canada, or who are or have been agents for the sake only of the remuneration which it brings, caring but little for the misery they have entailed, I have undertaken to continue an account of this fine province, where nothing is provided by Nature except fertile soil and a healthy climate; the rest she leaves to unremitting labour and to the exercise of judgment by the settler.
As I have already inferred, this work will contain nothing vituperative of the United States, of that people who are the grandchildren of Britannia, and whose well-being is so essential to the peace and security of Christendom.