This, although a long digression, will not, I hope, be without its use; and if this book is regarded not as a work of amusement but one of practical experience, written for the benefit of others, it will not fail to convey some useful hints to those who have contemplated emigration to Canada:  the best country in the world for the industrious and well-principled man, who really comes out to work, and to better his condition by the labour of his hands; but a gulf of ruin to the vain and idle, who only set foot upon these shores to accelerate their ruin.

But to return to Captain N—–.  It was at this disastrous period that Jenny entered his service.  Had her master adapted his habits and expenditure to his altered circumstances, much misery might have been spared, both to himself and his family.  But he was a proud man—­too proud to work, or to receive with kindness the offers of service tendered to him by his half-civilised, but well-meaning neighbours.

“Hang him!” cried an indignant English settler (Captain N—–­ was an Irishman), whose offer of drawing wood had been rejected with unmerited contempt.  “Wait a few years, and we shall see what his pride will do for him.  I am sorry for his poor wife and children; but for himself, I have no pity for him.”

This man had been uselessly insulted, at the very moment when he was anxious to perform a kind and benevolent action; when, like a true Englishman, his heart was softened by witnessing the sufferings of a young, delicate female and her infant family.  Deeply affronted by the captain’s foolish conduct, he now took a malignant pleasure in watching his arrogant neighbour’s progress to ruin.

The year after the sale of his commission, Captain N—–­ found himself considerably in debt, “Never mind, Ella,” he said to his anxious wife; “the crops will pay all.”

The crops were a failure that year.  Creditors pressed hard; the captain had no money to pay his workmen, and he would not work himself.  Disgusted with his location, but unable to change it for a better; without friends in his own class (for he was the only gentleman then resident in the new township), to relieve the monotony of his existence with their society, or to afford him advice or assistance in his difficulties, the fatal whiskey-bottle became his refuge from gloomy thoughts.

His wife, an amiable and devoted creature, well-born, well-educated, and deserving of a better lot, did all in her power to wean him from the growing vice.  But, alas! the pleadings of an angel, in such circumstances, would have had little effect upon the mind of such a man.  He loved her as well as he could love anything, and he fancied that he loved his children, while he was daily reducing them, by his favourite vice, to beggary.