occasion requires it; to understand the mystery of
soap, candle, and sugar-making; to make bread, butter, and cheese, or
even to milk her own cows; to knit and spin, and prepare the wool for
the loom. In these matters we bush-ladies have a wholesome disregard of
what Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so thinks or says. We pride ourselves on
conforming to circumstances; and as a British officer must needs be a
gentleman and his wife a lady, perhaps we repose quietly on that
incontestable proof of our gentility, and can afford to be useful
without injuring it.

Our husbands adopt a similar line of conduct: the officer turns his
sword into a ploughshare, and his lance into a sickle; and if he be seen
ploughing among the stumps in his own field, or chopping trees on his
own land, no one thinks less of his dignity, or considers him less of a
gentleman, than when he appeared upon parade in all the pride of
military etiquette, with sash, sword and epaulette. Surely this is as it
should be in a country where independence is inseparable from industry;
and for this I prize it.

Among many advantages we in this township possess, it is certainly no
inconsiderable one that the lower or working class of settlers are well
disposed, and quite free from the annoying Yankee manners that
distinguish many of the earlier-settled townships. Our servants are as
respectful, or nearly so, as those at home; nor are they admitted to our
tables, or placed on an equality with us, excepting at "bees," and such
kinds of public meetings; when they usually conduct themselves with a
propriety that would afford an example to some that call themselves
gentlemen, viz., young men who voluntarily throw aside those restraints
that society expects from persons filling a respectable situation.

Intemperance is too prevailing a vice among all ranks of people in this
country; but I blush to say it belongs most decidedly to those that
consider themselves among the better class of emigrants. Let none such
complain of the airs of equality displayed towards them by the labouring
class, seeing that they degrade themselves below the honest, sober
settler, however poor. If the sons of gentlemen lower themselves, no
wonder if the sons of poor men endeavour to exalt themselves about him
in a country where they all meet on equal ground; and good conduct is
the distinguishing mark between the classes.

Some months ago, when visiting a friend in a distant part of the
country, I accomp