As winter was now approaching, how to pass its long evenings agreeably and rationally was a question which was agitated.  The dwellers of America are more enlightened now than in those old times when dancing and feasting were the sole amusements, so a library was instituted and formed by the same means as the church had been—­a load of potatoes, or a barrel of buckwheat, being given by each party to purchase books with.  The selection of these, to suit all tastes, was a matter of some difficulty, the grave and serious declaiming against light reading, and regarding a novel as the climax of human wickedness.  One old lady, who by the way was fond of reading, and had studied the ancient tale of Pamela regularly, at her leisure, for the last forty years, was the strongest against these, and, on being told that her favourite tome was no less than a novel, she consigned it to oblivion, and seemed, for a time, to have lost all faith in sublunary things.  After some little trouble, however, the thing was satisfactorily arranged.  Even here, to this lone nook of the western world, had reached the fame of the Caxtons of modern times.  Aught that bore the name of Chambers, had a place in our collection, and the busy fingers of the little Edinburgh ‘devils’ have brightened the solitude of many a home on the banks of the Washedemoak.

The Indian summer, which, in November, comes like breathing space, ere the mighty power of winter sweeps o’er the earth, is beautiful, with its balmy airs and soft bright skies, yet melancholy in its loveliness as a fair face in death—­’tis the last smile of summer, and when the last wreath of crimson leaves fall to earth, the erratic birds take their flight to warmer lands—­the bear retires to his hollow tree—­the squirrel to his winter stores—­and man calls forth all his genius to make him independent of the storm king’s power.  In this country we have a specimen of every climate at its utmost boundary of endurance; in summer we have breathless days of burning heat shining on in shadowless splendour of sunlight; but it is in the getting up of a winter’s scene that New Brunswick is perfect.  True, a considerable tall sample of a snow-storm can sometimes be enjoyed in England, but nothing to compare with the free and easy sweep with which the monarch of clouds flings his boons over this portion of his dominions.  After the first snow-storm the woods have a grand and beautiful appearance, festooned with their garlands of feathery pearls—­the raindrops which fall with the earlier snows hang like diamond pendants, and flash in the sun, “As if gems were the fruitage of every bough.”