I have seen the grandmother in a wealthy family ironing the fine linen, or broiling over the cook-stove, while her daughter held her place in the drawing-room. How differently in my own country are these things ordered! where the most tender attention is paid to the aged, all their wants studied, and their comfort regarded as a sacred thing.
Age in Canada is seldom honoured. You would imagine it almost a crime for any one to grow old--with such slighting, cold indifference are the aged treated by the young and strong. It is not unusual to hear a lad speak of his father, perhaps, in the prime of life, as the "old fellow," the "old boy," and to address a grey-haired man in this disrespectful and familiar manner. This may not be apparent to the natives themselves, but it never fails to strike every stranger that visits the colony.
To be a servant is a lot sufficiently hard--to have all your actions dictated to you by the will of another--to enjoy no rest or recreation, but such as is granted as a very great favour; but to be a humble dependent in old age on children, to whom all the best years of your life were devoted with all the energy of maternal love, must be sad indeed. But they submit with great apparent cheerfulness, and seem to think it necessary to work for the shelter of a child's roof, and the bread they eat.
The improved circumstances of families, whose parents, in the first settlement of the country, had to work very hard for their general maintenance, may be the cause of this inversion of moral duties, and the parents not being considered properly on an equality with their better dressed and better educated offspring; but from whatever cause it springs, the effect it produces on the mind of a stranger is very painful. It is difficult to feel much respect for any one who looks down upon father or mother as an inferior being, and, as such, considers them better qualified to perform the coarse drudgeries of life. Time, we hope, will remedy this evil, with many others of the same class.
There was a bride, too, on board--a very delicate looking young woman, who was returning from a tour in the States to her native village. She seemed very much to dread the ordeal she had yet to pass through--in sitting dressed up for a whole week to receive visitors. Nor did I in the least wonder at her repugnance to go through this trying piece of ceremonial, which is absolutely indispensable in Canada.
The Monday after the bride and bridegroom make their first appearance at church, every person in the same class prepares to pay them a visit of congratulation; and if the town is large, and the parties well known, the making of visits to the bride lasts to the end of the week.
The bride, who is often a young girl from sixteen to twenty years of age, is doomed for this period to sit upon a sofa or reclined in an easy chair, dressed in the most expensive manner, to receive her guests.
Well she knows that herself, her dress, the furniture of her room, even her cake and wine, will undergo the most minute scrutiny, and be the theme of conversation among all the gossips of the place for the next nine days. No wonder that she feels nervous, and that her manners are constrained, and that nothing looks easy or natural about her, from her neck-ribbon to her shoe-tie.
"Have you seen the bride yet? What do you think of her? How was she dressed? Is she tall, or short? Pretty, or plain? Stupid, or clever? Lively, or quiet?" are all questions certain to be asked, and answered according to the taste and judgment of the parties to whom they are put; besides those thousand little interludes which spring from envy, ill-nature, and all uncharitableness. The week following they, in courtesy, must return all these visits; and, oh, what a relief it must be when all this stiff complimentary nonsense is over, and they are once more at home to themselves and their own particular friends!
There is another custom, peculiar to Canada and the United States, which I cordially approve, and should be very much grieved for its discontinuance.