Part 38 (1/2)
The Wesleyan Methodists always ”pray the old year out and the new year in,” as it is termed here, and they could not celebrate its advent in a more rational and improving manner. Their midnight anthem of praise is a sacred and beautiful offering to Him, whose vast existence is not meted out like ours, and measured by days and years.
Large parties given to very young children, which are so common in this country, are very pernicious in the way in which they generally operate upon youthful minds. They foster the pa.s.sions of vanity and envy, and produce a love of dress and display which is very repulsive in the character of a child. Little girls who are in the constant habit of attending these parties, soon exchange the natural manners and frank simplicity so delightful at their age, for the confidence and flippancy of women long hacked in the ways of the world.
For some time after I settled in the town, I was not myself aware that any evil could exist in a harmless party of children playing together at the house of a mutual friend. But observation has convinced me that I was in error; that these parties operate like a forcing bed upon young plants, with this difference, that they bring to maturity the seeds of _evil_, instead of those of goodness and virtue, and that a child accustomed to the heated atmosphere of pleasure, is not likely in maturer years to enjoy the pure air and domestic avocations of home.
These juvenile parties appear to do less mischief to boys than to girls.
They help to humanize the one, and to make heartless coquets of the other. The boys meet for a down-right romping play with each other; the girls to be caressed and admired, to show off their fine dresses, and to gossip about the dress and appearance of their neighbours.
I know that I shall be called hard-hearted for this a.s.sertion; but it is true. I have frequently witnessed what I relate, both at my own house and the houses of others; and those who will take the pains to listen to the conversation of these miniature women, will soon yield a willing a.s.sent to my observations, and keep their little ones apart from such scenes, in the pure atmosphere of home. The garden or the green field is the best place for children, who can always derive entertainment and instruction from nature and her beautiful works. Left to their own choice, the gay party would be a _bore_, far less entertaining than a game of blind-man's buff in the school-room, when lessons were over. It is the vanity of parents that fosters the same spirit in their children.
The careless, disrespectful manner often used in this country by children to their parents, is an evil which in all probability originates in this early introduction of young people into the mysteries of society. They imagine themselves persons of consequence, and that their opinion is quite equal in weight to the experience and superior knowledge of their elders. We cannot imagine a more revolting sight than a young lad presuming to treat his father with disrespect and contempt, and daring presumptuously to contradict him before ignorant idlers like himself.
”You are wrong, Sir; it is not so”--”Mamma, that is not true; I know better,” are expressions which I have heard with painful surprise from young people in this country; and the parents have sunk into silence, evidently abashed at the reproof of an insolent child.
These remarks are made with no ill-will, but with a sincere hope that they may prove beneficial to the community at large, and be the means of removing some of the evils which are to be found in our otherwise pleasant and rapidly-improving society.
I know that it would be easier for me to gain the approbation of the Canadian public, by exaggerating the advantages to be derived from a settlement in the colony, by praising all the good qualities of her people, and by throwing a flattering veil over their defects; but this is not my object, and such servile adulation would do them no good, and degrade me in my own eyes. I have written what I consider to be the truth, and as such I hope it may do good, by preparing the minds of emigrants for what they will _really find_, rather than by holding out fallacious hopes that can never be realized.
In ”Roughing it in the Bush,” I gave an honest personal statement of _facts_. I related nothing but what had really happened; and if ill.u.s.trations were wanting of persons who had suffered _as much_, and been reduced to the same straits, I could furnish a dozen volumes without having to travel many hundred miles for subjects.
We worked hard and struggled manfully with overwhelming difficulties, yet I have been abused most unjustly by the Canadian papers for revealing some of the mysteries of the Backwoods. Not one word was said _against the country_ in my book, as was falsely a.s.serted. It was written as a warning to well-educated persons not to settle in localities for which they were unfitted by their _previous habits and education_. In this I hoped to confer a service both on them and Canada; for the _prosperous_ settlement of such persons on cleared farms must prove more beneficial to the colony than their _ruin in the bush_.
It was likewise very cruelly and falsely a.s.serted, that I had spoken ill of the _Irish people_, because I described the revolting scene we witnessed at Grosse Isle, the actors in which were princ.i.p.ally Irish emigrants of the _very lowest cla.s.s_. Had I been able to give the whole details of what we saw on that island, the terms applied to the people who furnished such disgusting pictures would have been echoed by their own countrymen. This was one of those cases in which it was _impossible_ to reveal the _whole truth_.
The few Irish characters that occur in my narrative have been drawn with an _affectionate_, not a malignant hand. We had very few Irish settlers round us in the bush, and to them I never owed the least obligation. The contrary of this has been a.s.serted, and I am accused of _ingrat.i.tude_ by one editor for benefits I never received, and which I was too proud to ask, always preferring to work with my own hands, rather than to _borrow_ or _beg_ from others. All the kind acts of courtesy I received from the _poor Indians_ this gentleman thought fit to turn over to the Irish, in order to hold me up as a monster of ingrat.i.tude to his countrymen.
In the case of Jenny Buchannon and John Monaghan, _the only two Irish people_ with whom I had anything to do, the benefits were surely mutual.
Monaghan came to us a runaway apprentice,--not, by-the-bye, the best recommendation for a servant. We received him starving and ragged, paid him good wages, and treated him with great kindness. The boy turned out a grateful and attached creature, which cannot possible confer the opposite character upon us.
_Jenny's love and affection_ will sufficiently prove _our ingrat.i.tude_ to _her_. To the good qualities of these people I have done ample justice.
In what, then, does my ingrat.i.tude to the _Irish people_ consist? I should feel much obliged to the writer in the _London Observer_ to enlighten me on this head, or those editors of Canadian papers, who, without reading for themselves, servilely copied a _falsehood_.
It is easy to pervert people's words, and the facts they may represent, to their injury; and what I have said on the subject of education may give a handle to persons who delight in misrepresenting the opinions of others, to accuse me of republican principles; I will, therefore, say a few words on this subject, which I trust will exonerate me from this imputation.
That all men, morally speaking, are equal in the eyes of their Maker, appears to me a self-evident fact, though some may be called by His providence to rule, and others to serve. That the welfare of the most humble should be as dear to the country to which he belongs as the best educated and the most wealthy, seems but reasonable to a reflective mind, who looks upon man as a responsible and immortal creature; but, that _perfect equality_ can exist in a world where the labour of man is required to procure the common necessaries of life--where the industry of one will create wealth, and the sloth of another induce poverty--we cannot believe.
Some master spirit will rule, and the ma.s.ses will bow down to superior intellect, and the wealth and importance which such minds never fail to acquire. The laws must be enforced, and those to whom the charge of them is committed will naturally exercise authority, and demand respect.
Perfect equality never did exist upon earth. The old republics were more despotic and exclusive in their separation of the different grades than modern monarchies; and in the most enlightened, that of Greece, the plague spot of slavery was found. The giant republic, whose rising greatness throws into shade the once august names of Greece and Rome, suffers this heart-corroding leprosy to cleave to her vitals, and sully her fair fame, making her boasted vaunt of _equality_ a base lie--the scorn of all Christian men.