through which comes a faint perfume from the balm of gilead trees, sits the invalid, seemingly refreshed with the pleasant things around him.  He has been suffering from rheumatic fever caught in the changeful days of the early spring, when the moist air penetrates through nerve and bone, and when persons having the least tendency to rheumatism, or pulmonary complaints, cannot use too much caution.  At no other season is New Brunswick unhealthy; for the winter, although cold, is dry and bracing.  The hot months are not so much so as to be injurious, and the bland breezes of the fall and Indian summer are the most delightful that can be imagined.

Stephen Morris had come from England, like the generality of New Brunswick settlers, but lightly burthened with worldly gear—­but gifted with the unpurchasable treasures of a strong arm and willing spirit, that is, a spirit resolved to do its best, and not be overcome with the difficulties to be encountered in the struggle of subduing the mighty wilderness.  While he felled the forest, his wife, accustomed in her own country to assist in all field labours, toiled with him in piling and fencing as well as in planting and reaping.  Even their young children learned to know that every twig they lifted off the ground left space for a blade of grass or grain; beginning with this, their assistance soon became valuable, and the labour of their hands in the field soon lightened the burthen of feeding their lips.  Slowly and surely had Stephen gone onward, keeping to his farm and minding nothing else, unlike many of the emigrants, who, while professing to be farmers, yet engage in other pursuits, particularly lumbering, which, although the mainspring of the province and source of splendid wealth to many of the inhabitants, has yet been the bane of others.  Allured by the visions of speedy riches it promises, they have neglected their farms, and engaged in its glittering speculations with the most ardent hopes, which have far oftener been blighted than realised.  A sudden change in trade, or an unexpected storm in the spring, having bereft them of all, and left them overwhelmed in debt, with neglected and ruined lands, with broken constitutions, (for the lumberer’s life is most trying to the health,) and often too with broken hearts, and minds all unfitted for the task of renovating their fortune.  Their life afterwards is a bitter struggle to get above water; that tyrant monster, their heavy debt, still chaining them downwards, devouring with insatiate greed their whole means, for interest or bond, until it be discharged; a hard matter for them to accomplish—­so hard that few do it, and the ruined lumberer sinks, to the grave with its burthen yet upon him.  Stephen had kept aloof from this, and now surveyed,

    “——­With pride beyond a monarch’s spoil,
    His honest arm’s own subjugated toil.”