country, where white as well as red were recipients of England’s bounty, and many a tale of wild pathos or dark horror has he told of the experience of his youth with the people of the wild.  In New Brunswick his days had passed more peacefully.  He sat this evening with his chair poised in that aerial position on one leg which none but an American can attain.  Ambitious emigrants, wishing to be thought cute, attempt this delicate point of Yankee character, but their awkwardness falling short of the easy swing necessary for the purpose, often brings them to the ground.  A beautiful English cherry tree, with its snowy wreathes in full blow, stood before him; he had raised it from the seed, and loved to look upon it.  It had evidently been the object of his meditations, and served him now as a type wherewith to illustrate his remarks respecting the meeting we had attended—­like those professors of religion we to-day heard, he said, was his beautiful cherry tree.  It gave forth fair green leaves of promise and bright truth-seeming blossoms, but in summer, when he sought for fruit there was none; and false as it, were they of words so fair and deeds so dark, and he’d “double sooner trust one who laughed more and prayed less, than those same whining preachers.”  This was the old man’s opinion, not only respecting the baptists, but all other sects as well.  What his own ideas of religion were I never could make out.  Universalism I fancied it was, but differing much from the theories of those evanescent preachers who sometimes flashed like meteors through the land, leaving doubt and recklessness in their path.  The first truths of Christianity had been imparted to him, and these, mingling with his own innate ideas of veneration, formed his faith; as original, though more lofty in its aspirations, than the wild Indian’s who tells of the flowery land of souls where the good spirit dwells, and where buffalo and deer forsake not the hunting grounds of the blessed.  He held no outward form or right of sanctity.  The ceremony which bound him to his wife was simply legal, having been read over by the nearest magistrate.  His children were unbaptised, and the green graves of his household were in his own field, although a public burying-ground was by the meeting-house of the settlement.

Meanwhile the old lady, who had hailed our advent with the hospitality of her country, set about preparing our entertainment.  Tradition says of the puritans, the pilgrims of New England, that when they first stood on Plymouth Rock, on their first arrival from Europe, they bore the bible under one arm and a cookery book under the other.  Now, as to their descendants, the refugees, I am not exactly sure if, when they pilgrimised to New Brunswick, they were so careful of the bible, but I am certain they retain the precepts of the cookery book, and love to embody them when they may.  Soon as a guest comes within ken of a blue nose, the delightful operations commence.  The poorer class shifting with Johnny-cake and pumpkin, while, with the better off, the airy phantoms of custard and curls, which flit through their brains, are called into tangible existence.  The air is impregnated with allspice and nutmeg—­apple “sarce” and cranberry “persarves” become visible, while sal-a-ratus and molasses are evidently in the ascendant.