The fire-flies now gleam through the air like living diamonds, and the evening star has opened her golden eye in the rich deep azure of the sky.  Our home stands before us, with its white walls thrown in strong relief by the dark woods behind it:  and here, on this adjoining lot, lives our neighbour who is ill—­he who to-day has had the “barn raising.”  It would be but friendly to call and enquire for him.  The house is one of the best description of log buildings.  The ground floor contains two large apartments and a spacious porch, which extends along the front, has the dairy in one end and a workshop in the other, that most useful adjunct to a New Brunswick dwelling, where the settlers are often their own blacksmiths and carpenters, as well as splint pounders and shingle weavers.  The walls are raised high enough to make the chamber sufficiently lofty, and the roof is neatly shingled.  As we enter, an air of that undefinable English ideality—­comfort—­seems diffused, as it were, in the atmosphere of the place.  There is a look of retirement about the beds, which stand in dim recesses of the inner apartment, with their old but well-cared-for chintz hangings, differing from the free uncurtained openness of the blue nose settler’s couch; a publicity of sleeping arrangements being common all over America, and much disliked by persons from the old countries, a bed being a prominent piece of furniture in the sitting and keeping rooms of even those aristocratic personages, the first settlers.  The large solid-looking dresser, which extends nearly along one side of the house, differs too from the light shelf of the blue nose, which rests no more crockery than is absolutely necessary.  Here there is a wide array of dishes, large and small—­old China tea-cups, wisely kept for show,—­little funny mugs, curious pitchers, mysterious covered dishes, unearthly salad bowls, and a host of superannuated tea-pots.  Above them is ranged a bright copper kettle, a large silvery pewter basin, and glittering brazen candlesticks, all brought from their English home, and borne through toil and danger, like sacred relics, from the shrine of the household gods.  The light of the fire is reflected on the polished surface of a venerable oaken bureau, whose unwieldy form has also come o’er the deep sea, being borne along the creeks and rivers of New Brunswick, and dragged through forest paths to its present resting place.  In the course of its wanderings by earth and ocean it has become minus a foot, the loss of which is supplied by an unsmoothed block of pine, the two forming not an inapt illustration of their different countries.  The polished oaken symbol of England receiving assistance in its hour of need from the rude but hardy pine emblem of New Brunswick.  The room is cool and quiet; the young people being outside with a few who have lingered after the frolic.  By the open window, around which a hop vine is enwreathed, in memory of the rose-bound casements of England, and