of that lovely eye was enough to drive the adoring suitors to distraction, yet Mary Douglas coolly withstood their ardent gaze.  Dance and song mingle in successive round.  Youth and age alike join in the fairy scene.  Arch glances pass from courtly cavaliers to beautiful maidens who “blush at the praise of their own loveliness.”  The rustle of silken draperies sound to the ear as unseen music at the hand of the warbling genii.  Robes of spotless purity and gossamer texture flit around, keeping time to the merry ringing silvery peals of girlish merriment.  Such are the scenes that greet the eye and ear in roaming amid the gay throng at Government House, Fredericton, on the New Year’s Eve of 1828.

It would be a difficult task to make particular mention of the aristocratic matrons; still it would be a great injustice to pass over a matter of so much importance.  In fact, by some, the married ladies bore off the palm for beauty and intelligence.  Of a certainty the comparison excepted the ladies of Government House, there being none who could compete with Mary Douglas, her beauty being of a superior type.

At the ball a married lady of rank wore diamonds valued at a cost seeming fabulous.  Others followed in the wake of such extravagance by wearing necklaces, bracelets, head-dresses, ear-rings, and brooches, in almost unlimited profusion.  Add to this the magnificent array of Sir Howard’s supper table, its glittering plate in massive style, its enormous chandeliers, its countless train of liveried attendants, and you can then only form a very faint conception of the first ball given in the present Government House, nearly half a century in the past!

Truly this was the chivalric age in the history of the capital of New Brunswick—­the age when proud knighthood was the ruling passion in the breasts of the sterner sex, when true heroic bravery was the quality which won the maiden fair, when the breath of slander could not be tolerated without calling forth a brave champion on behalf of the wronged.  This is the age that has passed away never to return.  Progress and Reform are the two great powers combined to crush out all traces of those by-gone days.  In united action they ruthlessly wipe out every vestige or lingering relics of past greatness.  Nothing must stand in opposition to their will.  Reform suggests, Progress acts—­Reform suggests the removal of all old landmarks—­Progress assists in the accomplishment.  By such means, and through successive stages, did those days pass away, now to be reviewed, as a beautiful dream of the past.

Leaving this point we will proceed with the facts of the story.

The day following marked an event of much greater importance than that of the preceding evening—­it was important to all—­all classes were afterwards to be benefited by the great boon thus conferred on the people of New Brunswick.  Every parish and county had reason afterwards to rejoice in the great work of this auspicious moment.