anting of the later Canadian settlements.

Gradually the clearings widened around the first log-houses, and the
unsightly "stumps" grew smaller and blacker under the frequent touch of
fire. The rough "slash fences" made of brushwood and fallen trees, gave
place to the no less ugly, but more substantial "zigzag" of cedar rails.
The low, log farm-houses began to be dwarfed by the great framed barns
which the increasing harvest rendered necessary, until a succession of
such harvests rendered possible and prudent the building of framed
dwellings as well.

As the clearings widened and the farms became more productive, the
prosperity of the village advanced. A "grist-mill" was added to the
saw-mill, and as every year brought move people to the place, new arts
and industries were established. The great square house of Gershom
Holt, handsome and substantial, was built. Other houses were made neat
and pretty with paint, and green window-blinds, and door-yard fences, as
time went on.

Primitive fashions and modes of life which had done for the early days
of the settlement, gave place by degrees to the more artificial
requirements of village society. The usual homespun suit, which even
the richest had considered sufficient for the year's wear, was
supplemented now by stuffs from other looms than those in the farm-house
garrets. Housewives began to think of beauty as well as use in their
interior arrangements. "Boughten" carpets took the place of the yellow
paint and the braided mats once thought the proper thing for the "spare
room" set apart for company, and articles of luxury, in the shape of
high chests of drawers and hard hair-cloth sofas, found their way into
the houses of the ambitious and "well-to-do" among them. The changes
which increasing means bring to a community were visible in the village
and beyond it before the first twenty years were over. They were not
all changes for the better, the old people declared; but they still went
on with the years, till Gershom, as the village came to be called, began
to be looked upon by the neighbouring settlements as the centre of
business and fashion to all that part of the country.

The Holts were both rather indifferent as regarded religious matters,
but they had the hereditary respect of their countrymen for "school and
meeting privileges," and they were strong in the belief that the
ultimate prosperity of their community, even in material things,
depended mainly on