rising on the dish, some fried ham, and young French beans, which
grow there in the greatest luxuriance, climbing to the top of their
lofty poles till they can grow no higher. I have often thought them
scions of that illustrious bean-stalk owned by Jack in the fairy tale.
We have also a bowl of salad, and home-made vinegar prepared from maple
sap, a large hot cake, made with Indian meal, and milk and dried
blue-berries, an excellent substitute for currants. Buscuits, of snow
white Tenessee flour, raised with cream and sal-a-ratus. This last
article, which is used in place of yeast, or eggs, in compounding light
cakes, can also be made at home from ley of the wood ashes, but it is
mostly bought in town. The quantity of this used is surprising, country
"store-keepers" purchasing barrels to supply their customers. A
raspberry pie, and a splendid dish of strawberries and cream, with tea
(the inseparable beverage of every meal in New Brunswick), forms our
repast; and such would it be in ninety-nine houses out of a hundred of
the class I am describing. Many of the luxuries, and all the necessaries
of life, can be raised at home, by those who are industrious and
spirited enough to take advantage of their resources. Melancthon this
year expects to _bread himself_, as well as grow enough of hay to winter
his stock. Since he commenced farming he purchased what was not raised
on the land by the sale of what was cut off it--that is, by selling ash
timber and cord-wood he procured what he required. This, however, can
only be done where there is water conveyance to market. The
indefatigable Melancthon had four miles to "haul" his marketable wood;
but, when the roads were bad, he was chopping and clearing at the same
time, and when the snow was well beaten down, with his little French
horse and light sled he soon drew it to the place from whence the boats
are loaded in the spring. Dinner being now finished, and after some
conversation, which must of course be of a very local description,
although it is brightened with many a quiet touch of wit, of which the
natives possess a great original fund, and Melancthon, having finished
in the forenoon harrowing in his buck-wheat, has now gone with his axe
to hew at a house-frame which he has in preparation, and Sybel and I
having settled our affair of warp and woof, it is now time for me to
proceed. She with her large Swiss-looking sun-hat, placed lightly on
her brow, accompanies me to the "bars