CHAPTER XI.

Winter in Ontario—Flax-working in the old time—Social gatherings—The churches are centres of attraction—Winter marriages—Common schools—Wintry aspect of Lake Ontario.

Ourfathers spent their winter evenings and days of winter storms in working at the flax. It was the universal custom for each householder in our fathers’ time to raise a piece of flax, and, during the enforced housing of the winter, it was broken, scutched and spun around the big cavernous open fire. The distaff in those days was ever upon the floor in the common dwelling room, and as much an article of furniture as the family table. Quite a few of these old distaffs are yet bundled away in garrets, dust and cobweb laden. My own people did not fail to bring the distaff along with them when they came from Massachusetts in 1792, and this one was in constant use until machinery got to be common and the necessity for home manipulation to supply the family clothing no longer existed. To-day all that is changed, and during these midwinter days our people of this part of Ontario have no such occupation to fill in their leisure hours.

The days of wood-getting, logging and timber-making, too, are past; and at this day this peoplehave to develop a new order of civilization to meet the new condition of affairs. Our people read far more than formerly, and very many of their hours of winter leisure are spent over the printed page. In nearly every house one enters, too, in this part of our province to-day, one finds quite a number of volumes of books, as well as the general stock of newspapers. So the taste and knowledge of our people is steadily on the gain; and we are, as a people, taking the benefit of the respite from enforced hours of weary labor at the flax from which machinery has relieved us. Very serious accidents used to occur, too, in those days of hand labor at the flax, even simple as the work may seem. Very frequently the flax would be hung in bunches around the living room of the family, in which the great fireplace was. This flax, having been broken and scutched with the swingle, and ready for spinning, was perforce quite as ready to light as tinder. There were numerous instances of most dreadful fires occurring by this suspended flax igniting from some sparks dropping on it from the open fire. In one instance, not far from where my own house now is, a woman stepped to the road, only five or six rods away, leaving two small children in the room, and before she could get back to them the whole room was ablaze, and they perished, with the total destruction of the house.

Social gatherings largely make up to-day for the hours spent formerly in work at home. Among themselves the people of Ontario are eminently a social and hospitable lot. Almost nightly our folksgather among their fellows and spend their evenings in harmless chat.

But the great pivot upon which our social system revolves in Ontario is the church. At the church our amusements mostly cluster, too; for our ministers are shrewd enough to keep some meetings to come off in the future, which the people look forward to and talk about among themselves. Maybe it’s a lecture, or a musical treat, or some dissolving views, or what not; and these, added to the usual sermons from the pulpit, keep the people continually centred, as it were, about the church. Again, our churches are invariably well lighted and seated, and the air is pure; and, on the whole, they are attractive and pleasant. Hence our young folks even, as well as older ones, choose to be about our churches instead of finding amusement elsewhere. I am not speaking of the devotional part of the matter; our people continue to attend the churches, for that follows as a matter of course. Again, our ministers are shrewd enough to know that they could not hold the people at the churches two or three nights per week as well as Sundays for the devotional part alone; for, without detracting one jot from the purely religious aspect of the matter, our ministers know quite well that the devotional part alone would not hold our people without diversions. Indeed, our ministers are to be most highly commended for so cleverly managing our people as to keep them so at the church’s dangling apron-strings, as it were, to use a homely simile. Many, many times better at the church’s dangling apron-stringsthan spending the evening at the bars, in throwing dice, or at any such questionable gatherings. And I take it, too, as self-evident, that our people’s faithful following of the church has a quality of the intellect as well as of the heart. A remark of Castellar’s, the great Spanish statesman and orator, illustrates the difference of standpoint that prevails in various countries as to religious observances. He said, “The Protestant religion would freeze me with its iciness.” Compared with the sensuous and fascinating cathedral worship of Europe, our ceremonials, whether Protestant or Catholic, are indeed plain and unadorned. But they attract as intelligent, self-respecting, law-abiding and decent a lot of people as can be found anywhere.

Most marriages are celebrated during our winter months. It is quite manifest that social gatherings and meetings, brought about by the enforced hours of idleness, are very conducive to match-making; and this, perhaps, accounts for the matrimonial activity of the winter season. Not infrequently the expectant bride and groom, having procured a license of marriage, call upon the minister at his house for him to tie the knot. Ludicrous stories are told of the bashfulness of many persons who come on such errands. Some of our clergy yet require the responsive service, and the groom, when asked the question so necessary, “Wilt thou have this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?” sometimes replies, “I came on purpose.” Well, that’s a good answer, and shows his honesty of purpose, even if it be a little comic. The fellow’s not to be laughed at, however, even if he does make thisresponse, or even if he does pull off his gloves, in order to save them, the moment the ceremony is over and they are pronounced man and wife.

During these midwinter days in central Ontario, our school-boys are trudging through snows and amidst frosts to the Common School. Many an urchin these days declaims on the usual Friday afternoon:

“The bluebird and the swallow,From the sweet south grove,The robin leaves its quartersIn the deep pine grove;I know from whence they startedOn their happy homeward track;To-night you’ll hear them answerWith their clack, clack, clack.”

Or those who are more advanced, the more ambitious, essay:

“On Linden when the sun was low,All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”

Glorious Common Schools! and our own quite up to any in the world. And, without a shadow of a doubt, too, these urchins who are to-day, during this midwinter, so declaiming, will become our future orators, and their voices will resound in great halls of legislation or fill pulpits in our land. Let us hope that when they grow to manhood they may never become food for powder, and, so far as their military education is concerned, let it be conspicuous by its absence; and yet no loss will be felt, for it will not be among the things needed. Happy Ontario! If we were Germans or Frenchmen, we must serve threeyears in the army whether we would or not. This is only one more instance named to prove to us all that our own country is the happiest and the freest in the world, and that our people are generally well-to-do and comfortable in their homes, in food and clothing.

The mornings of late autumn, as the nights get longer, begin to have a nipping air. Ponds of water are covered with a glare and safe coat of ice, and our youngsters get out their skates, so carefully laid away last season. The children trudge away to school, and their color is heightened by the morning frost and wind; but gradually the human system is getting accustomed to the change of the season, and the dry, pleasant cold is enjoyable. Immense ice hummocks form upon the banks of our large lakes. They are conical and steep, or blunt and rolling, with a flat place here and there among the convolutions. Daily, as the cold strengthens and the winds dash the billows upon the ice-banks as if they would destroy them, they gather from each wave a little more frozen from it, and so work out from the shore, solid and immovable, as if to entirely close over our inland sea’s surface; but they do not, and they never succeed in effecting any permanent lodgment more than eight or ten rods from the shore. Somehow in freezing they invariably leave holes here and there. Now, let a storm come on and the breakers be driven against the ice-banks and under them—for they do not reach the bottom in any deep water—the pent-up water under the banks, driven up with terrific force by each incoming sea, tries to find an escape. These holes, in a measure, serve for an escape. Sprays or jets ofwater will be forced up through these holes twenty feet into the air, only to fall upon the surrounding ice and be frozen as hard as its neighboring globules in their icy immobility. The blow-holes of a whale furnish a good analogy to the blow-holes in the ice. Indeed, the most powerful whale can scarcely expel the water from his blow-holes higher than a storm forces it up among the ice-dunes. And as they get too high or too heavy near the outer edge, they break away in great lumps and go floating upon the surface. A change in the direction of the wind sails them away, and we see upon our inland seas ice islands sometimes many miles in extent. Look again for the ice islands in a few hours, and not a trace is seen. The waters are a deep blue, in strong contrast to the white snow upon the shore or the ice upon the edge. Stand upon an eminence and look along the shores and outer edge of the ice-bank, so firmly rooted to the margin. It is jagged and furrowed, and honeycombed, and awful, and withal so still. Not a bird is wheeling over the surface of the water, not a sail is upon it. The voice of Nature is effectually hushed to rest. While you are still observing, let the sun shine upon the ice and water, and you can with difficulty take your eyes off the picture—as fine a picture of the Arctic as we can get, even if it be in miniature. What a contrast from our golden autumn! Those of us who are not particularly subject to lung troubles and who are well fed and clad, really enjoy our dry and beautiful cold and the glint of the Arctic regions which these pictures afford us. Clearly defined and unmistakable is this our winter.

The coming of spring—Fishing by torch-light—Sudden beauty of the springtime—Seeding—Foul weeds—Hospitality of Ontario farmers.

Thereign of winter on the lake shore, with its hummocks of broken ice, seems longer than it really is. Those who observe it day by day are glad when March comes, with its lengthening days and its presage of spring. Soon we have a few days’ sunshine, and perhaps a warm pervasive rain. The change thus made is scarcely credible to those who have not seen it. In a few hours, with the sea beating upon this ice, before so unassailable, the banks shrivel the ice away. Here and there along the shores and among the sands obstinate pieces of ice still linger for a few days, half covered by the sands, which have thus far protected them. But spring, joyous spring, is near. The ubiquitous crow’s caw is once more in the air. Troops of wild ducks convene in the open spaces of our marshes and ponds. Sportsmen, before the light of day, creep up to the open water, and the first morning rays are greeted with a steady bang, bang. The sportsman has his reward. Should the lake surface be rough, so that the ducks cannot rest there, they are forced to fly back and forth, and the shooting goes on all through the day.

The fishing time arrives almost before we have expected it. You are made aware of it, perhaps, by a neighbor coming to borrow a spear. Now, nightly, pitch-pine torches will flare and blaze, casting a lurid light along our creeks. Stand at a distance and watch the fishers. See how their forms are increased in size until they look like veritable giants in the haze of the blazing light-jack. Hear their shouts as they race up and down the stream for suckers, pike, mullet and eels. “Here he goes”; “there’s another”; “plague on your jack—you missed that big fellow”; “hand me that spear, you are no good as a sportsman.” So the fun and jollity goes on far into the evening.

In this land, where the four seasons are clearly and distinctly defined, spring comes to us with a beauty unknown to those who dwell in lands which do not possess such unmistakable divisions of the year. If the winter was snowy, frosty and stormy, it had in its place sufficient enjoyments to make us love it; but now that it has passed, budding spring, with its ever-present deep green, comes to us with a bound, with a new pleasure of anticipation, added to its reality after it is once here.

How quickly our spring comes to us may, perhaps, be best shown by instancing that the last flurry of snow of one season was on the 7th day of April, and on the 20th of April the cattle were out feeding on the grass. A more abrupt change in any given locality is not to be found in any land, and stock generally is soon feeding upon the fields. Fruittrees were in blow three weeks before. Some of the most beautiful sights in nature are now afforded in our land by our fruit trees, laden with their pink and white blossoms, among which darts the industrious honey bee, and beside which are the deep green fields of grass or grain. Among our pastures, at the same time, nature is most prodigal of her beauties. The dandelions dot our fields with their yellow heads. These are the dandelions we used in our childhood days to pluck and hold under the chins of our companions. If the reflected light from the flower on the chin was yellow, partaking of the flower, our companion “liked butter,” but if not yellow our companion “did not love butter.”

Tiny blue violets are also among our fields, and many delicate blue garlands are woven by young hands, hung about our dwellings, and many times find their way into our schools and upon the teachers’ rostrums. The famed primrose of old England is no prettier than our wee violets, and for variety of color and deepness of the same we can safely invite comparison with any land under the sun.

Our clover meadows already wave with the breezes. Walk among the clover and see the ground-hog as he sits upon his haunches beside his hole of retreat, and see how he eyes your every movement. If you do not get too close, nor come upon him too suddenly, he quietly allows you to enjoy a good look at him. Make the first demonstrative motion and he disappears in an instant under the surface. This ground-hog is about the only universal rodent we have withus, and his ravages are so light that as a rule we do not seek his extermination. On the typical occasion referred to, seeding began about the middle of April, and was vigorously prosecuted, until by the end of May it was almost all accomplished. Grains first sown at this time almost completely covered the ground. This was about two weeks earlier than usual. It has generally been a rule among farmers to have their seeding all done by the 24th May, so as to have the leisure to celebrate that day at some neighboring town.

The old-fashioned way of seeding by hand, broadcast, is among the things that were. After that came the broadcast seeding machine. Now seeding machines are drills that put the seed down into the ground at any required depth and effectually cover it. Seed drills are also used as cultivators, and most excellent ones they make, too, so that our lands are now much better prepared for seed than formerly. The farmer who does not possess a seed drill is now considered only half equipped and not up to the mark. This change in the method of farming has given rise to enormous manufacturing businesses, for to supply three-fourths of the farmers of Canada alone with seed drills, any one at a moment’s reflection can see, must make a great business for manufacturers. And when our grass and grain come to maturity, light mowers will cut the first, and the ingenious complex binder will cut and bind the grain and leave it all ready for drawing in. In no country under the sun has agriculture made as great progress as inCanada during the last two decades. Labor-saving machines are as near perfection among us and as plentiful, and far more so than among any people of anything like the same population. Whenever any of our people get an idea that we are slow, just let such semi-discontented persons travel about the land of our forefathers in Britain or on the continent and he will return home fully convinced that they have not yet fully awakened up.

Foul weeds are annually becoming more prevalent among us. We are, in fact, annually seeing weeds in our fields which we never saw before, and whose name even we do not know. So from this fact alone, the old process of farming would not do now at all, neither would fourteen successive crops of wheat on one field, as has been done in Canada. The means of communication are now so quick that somehow these foul weeds of distant parts get generally disseminated over the land and are no longer locally confined to certain areas, supposed to be their individual homes, as they were formerly. Look along our railway tracks and you will frequently notice at the sides of the line weeds which you never saw before. It is only, then, a question of a season or two, when they will get into the neighboring field. There is, however, no need to be discouraged, for if we only look at the lands of the Old World which have been cultivated for a thousand years, we find all the foul weeds we know so far, and many dozens of kinds which we never saw before. Summer fallow and root crops, of course, is the first remedy. Our people areyearly putting in a greater area of roots and feeding more cattle. Our prized privilege of sending our cattle to the British markets alive was formerly one of our greatest boons, and we must try by all means to keep all cattle diseases out of our land, so that Britain will regard us as the favored people. Australia is too far away for live stock shipments. As for the United States, the climatic conditions are such there that we can grow healthy cattle when theirs are affected and beat them; that is to say, we can send live cattle and make a good profit when they cannot, but must send dead meat.

Seeding down and grass feeding upon our fields is another good method to rid our lands of these foul weeds. When the foul plants are young, by eating the fields pretty close our flocks nip off the foul stalks, and keep them from seeding. But if the plant be an annual, during the latter part of the season such pastures can with profit be turned into a late summer fallow, and thus be cleared. Wire root is got rid of by turnips and thorough cultivation. But perhaps the easiest and laziest way to get rid of this pest, which gets down so deep in lighter soils, is to sow buckwheat on such fields thick and heavy. Many farmers assert that a stout crop of buckwheat will choke the wire root out, and leave not a root alive. Ordinarily our farmers sow buckwheat only for this purpose, and to plough down as a green crop for manure. Very few of our farmers, in fact, will grow buckwheat for a crop, and consider it beneath the dignity of the quality of their fat lands to raise buckwheat as a crop. That man partakes of the nature of the soil, is, perhaps, to most persons at first thought an anomaly, but yet it is so. Where the soil grudgingly gives to the husbandman a very moderate living, his hospitality in a certain sense partakes of the nature of his lands. While he does his best for you as a guest, still the heartiness and bountifulness of his larder, for man and beast, is in a measure subdued, as it were, and somehow the guest feels that he ought not to deprive the careful husbandman of too much of his essentials of living. The husbandman is necessarily cramped and bound as his farm is. But go among those whose lands are fat and fill the great barns, and where it’s a task to take care of his bountiful crops, and we find another kind of a man entirely. There’s no stint. Your horse may consume bushels of oats per day if he will, and if ordinarily good milk is not of your liking, cream is just as free as the milk is. Open-handed, big-hearted; a man one involuntarily likes, as you grasp his broad, brown hand, and his fingers give a tight squeeze. And such are the great majority of Ontario’s husbandmen, a people of whom any nation may justly feel proud.

I am wandering from my springtime, and will get back by saying that bee culture among us is becoming fairly developed. Food for bees is in such abundance among our fields and fruits and woods, that in the future this industry must necessarily be much larger. Fourteen years ago I saw a field of about eight acres sown with sweet clover, to feed the farmer’s bees. It was the sweetest smelling field any one

CANADIAN APPLES AT THE GLASGOW EXHIBITION—“THE BEST IN THE EMPIRE.”

ever passed by; a grove of orange trees was nothing in comparison to it. Since it was such a novelty I am mentioning it, for it is the first instance I ever knew of. The farmer, who had one hundred swarms of bees, explained that his bees had been feeding upon the basswood trees, but now that they had got too far developed he wanted this sweet clover for later feed. And this bee-keeper averred that it fully paid him for sowing the eight acres of sweet clover.

Fruit prospects were never more promising than they were last spring. Our trees were one literal mass of blows. If they had all borne fruit the consequence would have been most disastrous, for all the trees would have been broken down. Of course, most of them fell off. It is not frost we so much fear in Ontario for blight of our buds, for we seldom get a frost severe enough for that after the blows come. Blight usually comes from a dry east or south-east wind, blowing steadily for a couple of days. This fact is so well known that on many trees the south-east side will be perfectly void of fruit, while the north-west side, which was sheltered by the rest of the tree, will be in bearing. We shall be able to send to British markets hundreds of thousands of apples this fall, which over there they so highly prize. But let the fruit-grower ever remember that he can’t get the prized red cheeks on his fruit unless Old Sol shines upon it. In order that he may do so the trees must be pruned quite open to let him peep among the branches.

A goodly and beautiful land we possess. We can raise anything which will grow in this temperate zone.Our lands are fat and not exhausted. Artificial manures we do not need, and they are scarcely known among us. In thickly populated Germany and Switzerland hillsides are spaded where too steep for the plough, and the husbandman succeeds in that method upon small holdings. The French peasant, to whom ten acres is a good-sized farm, does not plough his land, but turns it over, away down deep, fourteen inches or so, with a bent bill-hook, and he succeeds, and he and his family are independent and save money. We have room in Canada, not speaking of the North-West, for millions upon millions of persons, who will cultivate many patches of land now unused or in pasture. Health, independence and success await those who will get upon our lands and make an honest, downright manly effort.

Ontario in June—Snake fences—Road-work—Alsike clover fields—A natural grazing country—Barley and marrowfat peas—Ontario in July—Barley in full head—Ontario is a garden—Lake Ontario surpasses Lake Geneva or Lake Leman—Summer delights—Fair complexions of the people—Approach of the autumnal season—Luxuriant orchards.

Drivingthrough Ontario in June, the eye continually dwells upon a sea of green, with scarcely any interlude of rock, swamp or broken land. It is simply a succession of well-cultivated farms, mostly trim and nicely kept and well fenced. In many respects our province resembles old England, for, with all our vandalism, we have left a few groves of native forest trees, which here and there dot the landscape, and present to the view a beautiful, impenetrable, clearly-defined wall of green, raised, of course, above the level green of the crops below at the surface and extending up to their very bases. Our fences have, indeed, presented a decided improvement during the past few years. Very many of the boundary fences beside the highways are straight board fences, or straight rail and post fences. Hedges, of course, we cannot boast of. But our fences up to date present a clearlydefined boundary of farms, and form a bounded highway straight and clear, sixty-six feet wide.

In many of our still timbered portions of the province the old zig-zag rail fence is in use. But we have now in most places in the province passed by that day, and can no longer build such fences, for it is too great a waste of timber, though in some respects it’s the best and strongest fence we can possibly build, and will last the longest. But its days are numbered, and the fences of the future will be wire fences, which are now legal in our province. They have their advantages, principally in allowing the winds of winter to pass freely through and preventing drifts on the roads. By an Act of our Ontario Legislature, township councils can by law allow owners who will build wire fences before their farms to enclose six feet of the road allowance. Many persons are already taking advantage of that Act, but at all events the roads must be left fifty-four feet wide, taking off six feet from each side.

Road-work is in June quite general all over the province, and when driving along the highways one has to pass now and again over a few rods of awfully rough, unfinished patches of road. Sometimes the turnpiking is only half completed, or again the gravel has been left in great heaps, which give to your carriage the motion of a vessel at sea as it passes over the lumps. A few days, however, will remedy all that, as the road-work gets completed. Brawny, sunburnt farmers, wearing their straw hats, and with shirt sleeves rolled up, gather in groups under a“pathmaster,” and perform the requisite number of days “working for the King,” as it is termed. No doubt our fellows are quite as honest as any one would be under like circumstances, but we have yet to learn that any one has ever injured himself by road-work while so “working for the King” on the roads.

Crops cover the ground completely, and thoroughly hide the soil beneath. Many of them are, indeed, so high that they wave with the breezes. The fields present one unbroken sea of level, green verdure, generally free from all obstructions. Here and there, indeed, may be seen a nicely formed pile of stone boulders, gradually picked up from the fields as the plough exposes them to the surface, and yearly growing a little larger by being added thereto by subsequent ploughings. The farmer can’t afford obstructions these days in his fields, for in a few weeks reapers will quickly cut these crops, or, in many instances, binders will both cut and bind them at one process, and the farmer wants nothing in the way to hinder these great labor-savers. In June haying has already commenced, more especially clover crops. Where a crop of clover seed is sought as a second crop in this season, the clover hay of the first crop has been cut and garnered for some days. Alsike clover is in full bloom, and I defy any reader to say that he ever passed any field, grove, or flowers, in any part of the globe, which sends out a more pleasing fragrance than this alsike clover does. To pass a field of alsike clover when it’s in full blow is beautiful to the eye while resting on the pinkish-white blows, and gratefulto the sense of smell for its delicate and pungent perfume. Ordinary sentences are tame, indeed, in trying to describe the beauties of the alsike clover field in full bloom in Ontario. It must be seen and smelled to be appreciated. Now, speaking of all this alsike clover, and red clover as well, naturally leads one to think, what can all this clover seed be used for? It is an accepted fact, now, that Ontario can compete with the world in the growing of clover seed. Germany has been our great competitor, but it is now conceded that we can beat Germany. Driving along through the province in June one passes in almost endless succession field after field of both red clover and alsike, and the question naturally comes up, What is to be done with all this seed? It would appear that Ontario can produce enough clover seed to sow all those parts of our planet adapted to the growing of clover. Recollect, all parts cannot grow clover. If you go west and pass central Iowa, you leave the clover belt entirely; and if you go south and cross the Ohio River, you will not find much more clover. It is true that in Kentucky they boast of blue grass, which is only our June grass allowed to grow up strong and vigorous. But our Ontario is a natural clover country. If we leave a field uncultivated, it somehow, naturally of itself, gets back in clover, no matter if none were sown on the field.

Ontario is a natural grazing country; it must be, when the clover is so indigenous to the soil. It is just as well for our farmers to thoroughly grasp this fact, for with our innumerable springs and rills andabounding clover, we have one of the best cattle and horse-raising countries in the world. If the West, which cannot grow clover and such light-colored barley as the Americans want, is content to grow wheat, we had better by far let the West do it and confine ourselves to the specialties in which they cannot compete with us.

In barley and marrowfat peas we have a monopoly. On account of the money we get for the clover-seed itself we are again ahead of them, and are more than ahead of them in raising horses and cattle, which feed upon our clover. There is something in our climate, soil and feed which produces horses large and strong, which are ahead of the West by far. Hence the westerners continually buy from us to get our stock.

To prove that wheat does not pay, I will instance that the rent of land in Ontario County is usually $5.00 per acre. No matter if one owns his own farm, it is worth that as well. Seed, again, is worth $2.00 per acre for wheat, and the cultivation and harvesting is worth another $7.00 per acre, making the acre of wheat cost $14 per acre. Now, at an average yield of twenty-five bushels per acre, and this sold at 75 cents per bushel, it yields $18.75 per acre, or only $4.75 more than the crop cost. It’s no pay, and there’s no other way to look at it, and hereafter we ought to raise wheat enough only for our own use, as long as it’s such a drug on the market, especially so when we can do much better with peas, barley, cattle and horses. Let those interested ponder over this point.

It might be thought that we shall raise too much clover-seed for the market. It is used as a dye in Great Britain for certain cloths, we are told, and all of our seed is not sown. Hence it is hardly probable we shall produce too much. In the matter of peas, we have never yet produced more marrowfat peas than Europe will take from us. Recollect, but few other countries can produce marrowfat peas. Some places have the bug and mildew, and can’t grow the peas at all, and we have this crop almost to ourselves. Barley, it seems, the Americans will buy from us as long as we grow it, for it’s the best. And in fruit we all know we can produce the best keepers in the world, so that our outlook in Ontario is bright for the future.

When July comes some portions of our province sometimes suffer slightly from drouth. Seldom, however, has the drouth been severe enough to cause anything like a failure in crops, although late sown crops here and there have been occasionally light. This, however, is not so general as to apply to the whole province, for in some sections you may see that our fields never smile more sweetly upon us than they do at this season. In July fall wheat is just turning and beginning to look like fields of gold. In spots in the fields the wheat has been winter-killed, and many pieces are ploughed up entirely. Looking over those fields which were ploughed up and sowed with some spring crop, they present a rather odd appearance, for the vitality of the fall wheat is so great that in many places the ploughing did not kill it,and consequently we see tufts of great tall heads of fall wheat now ripening among the still green and much shorter crop of spring grain. Those who are not familiar with fall wheat could scarcely get an idea how it occurs that fall wheat can be ripening in and among a spring crop, quite green as yet.

Barley in July is in full head and just commencing to turn yellow. Fields upon fields of this grain are passed as one drives on our highways. Those who have not driven much upon our roads, and closely observed, can scarcely believe how general the barley crop is in Ontario at this season. Almost invariably it is looking well, and if it be not as a whole an extremely heavy crop, yet it will be a paying one, and one we must grow. Laying aside all matters of temperance and Scott Act, ours is a barley country, and barley we must grow. Peas are now mostly in full blow, and are rank and of the deepest green. A more luxuriant growth than our pea crop in most seasons cannot be found in any country. If you would judge of the unsurpassed fertility of our soils, just go and see our pea crops. Ontario alone can furnish the soup basis for all the navies of the world.

Our spring wheat is just now putting forth its ear. Oats are just beginning to head. The drouth seems to have affected oats more than any other crop so far. They may, however, if we get some rains, head up heavy, but in any event the straw will be rather short.

We live in a garden here in Ontario. No one who drives about our roads can come to any other conclusion. There are no blanks, and but little broken land; but few swamps, and scarcely a break. Only a few days ago I drove twelve miles without passing a hill higher than forty feet, or seeing an acre of broken land; just one mass of green in the fields. There was positively not one foot of broken land for the whole twelve miles, and I feel that I have a right to say that we live in a garden. Those who are at home most of the time do not realize that they are living under the most favorable conditions in the world. During a lot of travel in every State of the American Union, I have never yet seen anything over there to approach our own country. Of course, out West one can traverse miles upon miles of corn fields, but it’s all corn; but here it’s a general variety, which is so pleasant to the eye, and which also brings in our great returns. And our fruits are upon every hand, from the grape to the strawberry, to the apple and pear, and all succeeding. The only parallel that I ever saw to Ontario is in the plains of Hungary, say, about Buda-Pesth. There is a country very much resembling Ontario, but, of course, not anything like it in size. It was from this locality that we got our present roller process of making flour. I am only making this comparison with Hungary to let our Ontarians know that we have, in truth, the finest country in this world, that we may all be spurred on to cultivate our lands better, for we are only yet in our infancy. Let us all realize that our lands never refuse, when properly cultivated, to produce anything which will grow in the north temperatezone. Famed Geneva or Leman cannot surpass our beautiful Lake Ontario; and then as to size and extent, there’s no comparison to be made. And yet it is beautiful around Lake Leman, and locations along its shores are much sought by all Europe, and command unheard-of prices. Our shore is just as beautiful, and our waters just as limpid and just as cool. About Constantinople is the only other place I can name as being at all worthy of comparison with our Lakes Ontario and Erie shore for residences. Now, it is beautiful about the Bosphorus, and charming beyond measure, and Constantinople must always be a great city, no matter who possesses it. Yet, somehow, just a little digressing, we would all like to see Britain owning it, but Russia never. Then, I say, about Lake Leman and the Bosphorus are the only parallels to our places and resorts along these north shores of our Great Lakes. On the whole, the north shore of Lake Ontario has the preference, for it’s never so hot here at any time as it is about Geneva or Constantinople. We have in Ontario great inland, fresh-water seas, having pure, limpid waters, and a soil which will discount any in the world beside them, and an equable climate. If it does get warm for a day or two, it never remains too uncomfortably so for long, and our evenings are generally cool and pleasant from the lake breezes. Going down into a cellar like the Dakotans to escape hot breezes, which there become insufferable, we never think of. Already along the north shore of Lake Ontario, from Niagara to Kingston, our peoplegather during the summer months by thousands. Between Hamilton and Toronto, and down as far as Belleville, there are hundreds of summering camps. As one passes along the roads near the lake one sees thousands upon thousands of ladies dressed in white, and gentlemen in shirt-sleeves sporting in the groves, on the green along the shores, or boating about bays and inlets.

People dot the landscape for a couple of hundred miles, and flit to and fro among the leafy bowers. It would, indeed, be hard to find a prettier sight than that of our people summering along the lake banks these July days. While other persons south of us, over in Uncle Sam’s dominions, are sweltering with the thermometer at 104° in the shade, our people are pleasantly cool along our northern lake shores. The consequence is that summer heats do not deplete us. Saffron yellow faces, with high protruding cheek bones, accompanied by dark circles under the eyes, such as are found in hot districts where the thermometer will persist in getting up to 104° and staying there, we know not of at all. Ontarians are a plump, well-developed people, and have, as a rule, fair complexions and good skins. Our ladies are just stout enough to be attractive under these conditions, and developing their physique as they do along our lakes, by picnicking and rowing and games, are the peers of any in the world. Yea! to make a quick and perhaps unseemly comparison, I wish to say that the same causes and the same equable cool temperature which cause our ladies’ cheeks to burnish red and brown, produce for us in our fields the finest barleyin the world and the best peas. So Nature has been prodigal to us in her gifts. About Toronto, of course, the greater population centres, and within a radius of thirty miles or so, along the lake on either side, the greater number of summer saunterers are to be seen. As Toronto gets on up to a quarter of a million of inhabitants, as it must, all available points upon the lake shores will be seized upon for outing for its citizens. The day, moreover, must be far distant when we shall be much crowded for space along the lake banks. But it does not need a very far-seeing prophet to see that a dense population must centre in Ontario along our lakes. Think what it was, and you will conclude that rapid as our progress has been, for the next twenty-five or thirty years our progress and increase in population will be five-fold what it was in the past twenty-five or thirty years. Ontarians need not go to Cacouna, or Murray Bay, or anywhere else for a summering. We can do better at home along our own waters. As time goes on we must get more and more of our American cousins from the region of 104° in the shade to come and summer with us. Ontario, in fact, must ultimately be the great summer resort of this continent. Take the readings of the thermometer in Toronto alone, and you will find that it possesses the most equable climate of any city in America east of the Rocky Mountains; and beautiful, and clear, and healthy as it is, it must be, as it now is, and far more so, the great metropolitan city of our country. Ontarians, let us cherish our homes and our birthrights.

As the fall season comes to us in Ontario the result of the last summer’s bountifulness is visibly apparent. On every side the steady, unremitting drone or hum of the threshing-machines daily falls upon the ear, and well we know that for every hour the thresher runs, bushels upon bushels of grain are being gathered into the farmers’ granaries. Dust-begrimed, sweaty men, with forks in hand, are all the time endeavoring to stop its spacious maw, but never succeeding, for its capacity of digestion is inexorable, and after each forkful it is quite as ready again for another, and so the work goes on by the hour (and the hum comes to the listener two miles away, on the wind), giving the husbandman an abundance for the season. There is scarcely a cessation until the noon hour arrives, when the shrill, ambitious scream of the piping engine which furnishes the motive power gives the welcome warning that dinner is ready. The noon hour past, again a scream from the ambitious engine, as if it would try to be entered among the fellowship of its greater brother engines in our manufactories and upon our railways. With their shirts half dry the farmers again tend to the machine’s voracious maw, knowing full well that it’s only a question of a few minutes, when the increased perspiration will wet them as fully as before.

The golden apples of Hesperides were never more beautiful or pleasing to the eye than those of our orchards, laden with their golden fruit. It is presumed these golden apples were oranges, and even so, it is just a question if they ever were prettier than many of our colored apples. The “King” with its red cheeks, or the “Fameuse,” and many other kindswill rival the famed oranges for beauty any day. Manifestly one of the prettiest sights in nature is to see an orchard of considerable size in Ontario, heavily laden with fruit, and its limbs bending to the ground with their burdens. Let the breeze just gently stir the leaves, and sway the branches, and the dancing sunbeams glinting upon the sheen of the apples’ sides, and then as you walk through and among the trees, nature smiles at you, and you realize that ours is indeed a beauteous and kindly land.

And this is our autumn, clearly defined, and in a few days to be rendered doubly beautiful as the first frosts touch the foliage upon the maples, the birches, and the beeches, and transform their leaves into a broad gallery of the brightest and most variegated colors. Tropical dwellers, who have never seen the transformation, know not of the beauty this world in our north temperate zone affords. It is supposed to be ever green in the tropics, but the winter green down there is not beautiful, but a dull, dusty, dark russet. This decided change, which our fall season produces, they can have no conception of, and we would not trade our season with them if we could. Man loves variety. Universal green one tires of, but our recurring seasons always awaken in us a zest, and we love them in their turn.

Indian summer is soon upon us, with its delicious dreamy haze, when life out-of-doors is appreciated to its fullest extent. You can never quite make up your mind, when this season is with us, whether it be too warm or too cold. Physical existence becomes a perfect luxury, and a feeling of sensuousness gradually steals over one. During all the travels I have made to other lands, in different climates, I have yet to find the equal of our Indian summer. Gradually the frost of the nights gets more intense and the leaves fall, and are blown in windrows by the winds. Trees overhanging streams completely cover the still pools with their leaves; the bark of the birch, by way of contrast, is whiter if possible than before, and the few remaining leaves upon the almost nude branches have not yet lost their gay colors. Now let the mid-day sun shine upon valley and grotto, and glimmer and dance upon the thin film of last night’s ice, and you have a picture that even the most obtuse cannot fail to love at sight.

Day by day nature becomes stiller. The earthworm has gone deeper into the soil, the birds have left us for the south, and only the shrill pipe of the blue jay remains of the birds’ summer campaign. Solitary crows, indeed, are almost ever ubiquitous, and their parting caw! caw! will soon announce the order of their going. The fox has prepared his hole by the side of some upturned tree, and the chipmunk has laid away his store of beechnuts for a winter supply. Nature is preparing for winter. This is the interregnum, as it were, and it is neither autumn nor winter. The farmer daily follows his plough, if the previous night’s frost has not been too severe. If it has, he must need wait until nine or ten o’clock, to let the previous night’s freeze soften in the sun’s rays. About the middle of December he has to lay his plough aside, for at last, after repeated warnings, gentle enough at first, the frost is really upon him.

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