As trees strengthen with years, our attachment has grown deeper and purer.  Just as soon as I made my footing good in Toronto, our marriage took place.  Lovers before the ceremony we are lovers still.  Ah, my dear lassie, do not think love is a brief fever of youth—­a transient emotion that fades before the realities of wedded life like the glow from a cloud at morn.  Where love is of the true quality, it becomes purer and tenderer with the passing years.  Death may interrupt, but cannot end such affection as ours.  Love is eternal.

With Mr Kerr I kept up the exchange of letters he asked, and the information and advice his contained have helped to shape my character and opinions.  The year after his arrival he started in business for himself and prospered.  His wife is the girl whom he was courting when he fled from Greenock.  Our visits to them are delightful memories and you know how we enjoy their sojourns with us.  Jabez also became a Montrealer.  The business of himself and brothers as carters naturally merged into forwarders.  As trade grew it was found needful one should be in Montreal, and Jabez went.  Levelheaded and full of resource he soon came to the front in the shipping-trade.

With Mr Snellgrove we had an unlooked for encounter.  The master was on a visit to us at Toronto.  On reading notices of a meeting to be held in favor of Protection and of the government issuing paper currency instead of gold, we decided to attend.  The first speaker was Isaac Buchanan, who deluged us with figures about Bullionism and the balance of trade.  We were relieved when he ended.  Then a college professor read a paper on the Co-relation of Great Britain and her Colonies.  It was difficult to follow him.  He was one of those theoretical men who think forms of government and names can make a country great.  We started with astonishment on the chairman saying he had pleasure in introducing Mr Snellgrove as the next speaker.  It was he sure enough, older but still spruce, and resplendent in full evening dress.  He did not touch on currency, but confined himself to advocating a protective tariff so high that it would shut out foreign goods.  That would enable manufacturers to establish themselves in Canada, and instead of a stream of gold going to Britain and the United States the money would be spent for goods made in Canada.  See what a rich country we would become if we kept our money here, he said; our great lack is capital to develop our immense resources.  We had the capital in our own hands but, blind to our own interests, sent it away to Great Britain or, what was worse, to the United States to build up a country that was hostile to us.  Like the Gulf Stream, which sweeping through the Atlantic enriches every country it touches, he would have a golden circuit established in Canada—­the farmers would sell to the manufacturers and the money paid them would continue to flow backward and forward to the enrichment of both.  The flowing of gold from our midst would