he harbour
for three or four miles into the land behind the city of Halifax. A
'lawn with oak-trees round the edges,' a little garden and orchard with
apple and cherry trees, surrounded the house. Behind, sombre pine-groves
shut it out from the world, and in front, at the foot of the hillside,
the cheery waters of the 'Arm' ebbed and flowed in beauty. On the other
side of the water, which is not much more than a quarter of a mile wide,
rose knolls clothed with almost every native variety of wood, and bare
rocky hills, with beautiful little bays sweeping round their feet and
quiet coves eating in here and there. A vast country, covered with
boulders and dotted with lovely lakes, stretched {12} far beyond. Amid
these surroundings the boy grew up, and his love of nature grew with him.
In later years he was never tired of praising the 'Arm's enchanted
ground,' while for the Arm itself his feelings were those of a lover for
his mistress. Here is a little picture he recalls to his sister Jane's
memory in after days:

Not a cove but still retaineth
Wavelets that we loved of yore,
Lightly up the rock-weeds lifting,
Gently murmuring o'er the sand;
Like romping girls each other chasing,
Ever brilliant, ever shifting,
Interlaced and interlacing,
Till they sink upon the strand.

In his boyish days he haunted these shores, giving to them every hour he
could snatch from school or work. He became very fond of the water, and
was always much at home in it. He loved the trees and the flowers; but
naturally enough, as a healthy boy should, he loved swimming, rowing,
skating, lobster-spearing by torch-light, or fishing, much more. He
himself describes these years:

The rod, the gun, the spear, the oar,
I plied by lake and sea--
Happy to swim from shore to shore,
Or rove the woodlands free.

In the summer months he went to a school in {13} the city, taught by a Mr
Bromley on Lancaster's system. 'What kind of a boy was Joe?' was asked
of an old lady who had gone to school with him sixty years before. 'Why,
he was a regular dunce; he had a big nose, a big mouth, and a great big
ugly head; and he used to chase me to death on my way home from school,'
was her ready answer. It is easy to picture the eager, ugly, bright-eyed
boy, fonder of a frolic with the girls than of Dilworth's spelling-book.
He never had a very handsome face; his features were not chiselled, and
the mould was not Grecian