“Tom, Tom! are you going mad?” said my husband, shaking him.

“I never was sane, that I know of,” returned he.  “You know that it runs in the family.  But do let me have my laugh out.  The woods!  Ha! ha!  When I used to be roaming through those woods, shooting—­though not a thing could I ever find to shoot, for birds and beasts are not such fools as our English emigrants—­and I chanced to think of you coming to spend the rest of your lives in the woods—­I used to stop, and hold my sides, and laugh until the woods rang again.  It was the only consolation I had.”

“Good Heavens!” said I, “let us never go to the woods.”

“You will repent if you do,” continued Tom.  “But let me proceed on my journey.  My bones were well-nigh dislocated before we got to D—–.  The roads for the last twelve miles were nothing but a succession of mud-holes, covered with the most ingenious invention ever thought of for racking the limbs, called corduroy bridges; not breeches, mind you,—­for I thought, whilst jolting up and down over them, that I should arrive at my destination minus that indispensable covering.  It was night when we got to Mr. —–­’s place.  I was tired and hungry, my face disfigured and blistered by the unremitting attentions of the blackflies that rose in swarms from the river.  I thought to get a private room to wash and dress in, but there is no such thing as privacy in this country.  In the bush, all things are in common; you cannot even get a bed without having to share it with a companion.  A bed on the floor in a public sleeping-room!  Think of that; a public sleeping-room!—­men, women, and children, only divided by a paltry curtain.  Oh, ye gods! think of the snoring, squalling, grumbling, puffing; think of the kicking, elbowing, and crowding; the suffocating heat, the mosquitoes, with their infernal buzzing—­and you will form some idea of the misery I endured the first night of my arrival in the bush.

“But these are not half the evils with which you have to contend.  You are pestered with nocturnal visitants far more disagreeable than even the mosquitoes, and must put up with annoyances more disgusting than the crowded, close room.  And then, to appease the cravings of hunger, fat pork is served to you three times a day.  No wonder that the Jews eschewed the vile animal; they were people of taste.  Pork, morning, noon, and night, swimming in its own grease!  The bishop who complained of partridges every day should have been condemned to three months’ feeding upon pork in the bush; and he would have become an anchorite, to escape the horrid sight of swine’s flesh for ever spread before him.  No wonder I am thin; I have been starved—­starved upon pritters and port, and that disgusting specimen of unleavened bread, yclept cakes in the pan.

“I had such a horror of the pork diet, that whenever I saw the dinner in progress I fled to the canoe, in the hope of drowning upon the waters all reminiscences of the hateful banquet; but even here the very fowls of the air and the reptiles of the deep lifted up their voices, and shouted, ‘Pork, pork, pork!’”