labourers, the expense would have been more than the value of the house, but ’twas done by what is called a “frolic.”  When people have a particular kind of work requiring to be done quickly, and strength to accomplish it, they invite their neighbours to come, and, if necessary, bring with them their horses or oxen.  Frolics are used for building log huts, chopping, piling, ploughing, planting, and hoeing.  The ladies also have their particular frolics, such as wool-picking, or cutting out and making the home-spun woollen clothes for winter.  The entertainment given on such occasions is such as the house people can afford; for the men, roast mutton, pot pie, pumpkin pie, and rum dough nuts; for the ladies, tea, some scandal, and plenty of “sweet cake,” with stewed apple and custards.  There are, at certain seasons, a great many of these frolics, and the people never grow tired of attending them, knowing that the logs on their own fallows will disappear all the quicker for it.  The house being now on the runners, thirty yoke of oxen, four abreast, were fastened to an enormous tongue, or pole, made of an entire tree of ash.  No one can form any idea, until they have heard it, of the noise made in driving oxen; and, in such an instance as this, of the skill and tact required in starting them, so that they are all made to pull at once.  I have often seen the drivers, who are constantly shouting, completely hoarse; and after a day’s work so exhausted that they have been unable to raise the voice.  Although the cattle are very docile, and understand well what is said to them, yet from the number of turnings and twistings they require to be continually reminded of their duty.  Amid, then, all the noise and bustle made by intimating to such a number whether they were to “haw” or “gee,” the shoutings of the younger parties assembled, the straining of chains and the creaking of boards, the ponderous pile was set in motion along the smooth white and marble-like snow road, whose breadth it entirely filled up.  It was a sight one cannot well forget—­to see it move slowly up the hill, as if unwilling to leave the spot it had been raised on, notwithstanding the merry shouts around, and the flag they had decked it with streaming so gaily through the green trees as they bent over it till it reached the site destined for it, where it looked as much at home as if it were too grave and steady a thing to take the step it had done.  This was in March—­we had been waiting some time for snow, as to move without it would have been a difficult task; for, plentifully as New Brunswick is supplied with that commodity, at some seasons much delay and loss is experienced for want of it—­the sleighing cannot be done, and wheel carriages cannot run, the roads are so rough and broken with the frost—­the cold is then more intense, and the cellars, (the sole store-houses and receptacles of the chief comforts) without their deep covering of snow, become penetrated by the frost, and their contents much injured, if not