gray of weather-beaten wood. Sometimes, in the better
class of houses, a gallery is built across the front and around one
side, and a square of garden is fenced in, with dahlias and hollyhocks
and marigolds, and perhaps a struggling rosebush, and usually a small
patch of tobacco growing in one corner. Once in a long while you may see
a balm-of-Gilead tree, or a clump of sapling poplars, planted near the
door.

How much better it would have been if the farmer had left a few of the
noble forest-trees to shade his house. But then, when the farmer
came into the wilderness he was not a farmer, he was first of all a
wood-chopper. He regarded the forest as a stubborn enemy in possession
of his land. He attacked it with fire and axe and exterminated it,
instead of keeping a few captives to hold their green umbrellas over his
head when at last his grain fields should be smiling around him and he
should sit down on his doorstep to smoke a pipe of home-grown tobacco.

In the time of adversity one should prepare for prosperity. I fancy
there are a good many people unconsciously repeating the mistake of the
Canadian farmer--chopping down all the native growths of life, clearing
the ground of all the useless pretty things that seem to cumber it,
sacrificing everything to utility and success. We fell the last green
tree for the sake of raising an extra hill of potatoes; and never stop
to think what an ugly, barren place we may have to sit in while we eat
them. The ideals, the attachments--yes, even the dreams of youth are
worth saving. For the artificial tastes with which age tries to make
good their loss grow very slowly and cast but a slender shade.

Most of the Canadian farmhouses have their ovens out-of-doors. We saw
them everywhere; rounded edifices of clay, raised on a foundation of
logs, and usually covered with a pointed roof of boards. They looked
like little family chapels--and so they were; shrines where the ritual
of the good housewife was celebrated, and the gift of daily bread,
having been honestly earned, was thankfully received.

At one house we noticed a curious fragment of domestic economy. Half a
pig was suspended over the chimney, and the smoke of the summer fire was
turned to account in curing the winter's meat. I guess the children of
that family had a peculiar fondness for the parental roof-tree. We saw
them making mud-pies in the road, and imagined that they looked lovingly
up at the pendent porker, outline