Roughing It in the Bush. Susanna Moodie
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him, with a sneer, how many years he had been there.
“Seven,” returned Tom, in a solemn tone, without deigning a glance at his companion.
“I thought so,” responded the other, thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets. “And pray, sir, what were you sent there for?”
“Stealing pigs,” returned the incorrigible Tom, with the gravity of a judge. The words were scarcely pronounced when the questioner called the coachman to stop, preferring a ride outside in the rain to a seat within with a thief. Tom greatly enjoyed the hoax, which he used to tell with the merriest of all grave faces.
Besides being a devoted admirer of the fair sex, and always imagining himself in love with some unattainable beauty, he had a passionate craze for music, and played upon the violin and flute with considerable taste and execution. The sound of a favourite melody operated upon the breathing automaton like magic, his frozen faculties experienced a sudden thaw, and the stream of life leaped and gambolled for a while with uncontrollable vivacity. He laughed, danced, sang, and made love in a breath, committing a thousand mad vagaries to make you acquainted with his existence.
My husband had a remarkably sweet-toned flute, and this flute Tom regarded with a species of idolatry.
“I break the Tenth Commandment, Moodie, whenever I hear you play upon that flute. Take care of your black wife,” (a name he had bestowed upon the coveted treasure), “or I shall certainly run off with her.”
“I am half afraid of you, Tom. I am sure if I were to die, and leave you my black wife as a legacy, you would be too much overjoyed to lament my death.”
Such was the strange, helpless, whimsical being who now contemplated an emigration to Canada. How he succeeded in the speculation the sequel will show.
It was late in the evening before my husband and his friend Tom Wilson returned from Y——. I had provided a hot supper and a cup of coffee after their long walk, and they did ample justice to my care.
Tom was in unusually high spirits, and appeared wholly bent upon his Canadian expedition.
“Mr. C—— must have been very eloquent, Mr. Wilson,” said I, “to engage your attention for so many hours.”
“Perhaps he was,” returned Tom, after a pause of some minutes, during which he seemed to be groping for words in the salt-cellar, having deliberately turned out its contents upon the tablecloth. “We were hungry after our long walk, and he gave us an excellent dinner.”
“But that had nothing to do with the substance of his lecture.”
“It was the substance, after all,” said Moodie, laughing; “and his audience seemed to think so, by the attention they paid to it during the discussion. But, come, Wilson, give my wife some account of the intellectual part of the entertainment.”
“What! I—I—I—I give an account of the lecture? Why, my dear fellow, I never listened to one word of it!”
“I thought you went to Y—— on purpose to obtain information on the subject of emigration to Canada?”
“Well, and so I did; but when the fellow pulled out his pamphlet, and said that it contained the substance of his lecture, and would only cost a shilling, I thought that it was better to secure the substance than endeavour to catch the shadow—so I bought the book, and spared myself the pain of listening to the oratory of the writer. Mrs. Moodie! he had a shocking delivery, a drawling, vulgar voice; and he spoke with such a nasal twang that I could not bear to look at him, or listen to him. He made such grammatical blunders, that my sides ached with laughing at him. Oh, I wish you could have seen the wretch! But here is the document, written in the same style in which it was spoken. Read it; you have a rich treat in store.”
I took the pamphlet, not a little amused at his description of Mr. C——, for whom I felt an uncharitable dislike.
“And how did you contrive to entertain yourself, Mr. Wilson, during his long address?”
“By thinking how many fools were collected together, to listen to one greater than the rest. By the way, Moodie, did you notice farmer Flitch?”
“No; where did he sit?”
“At the foot of the table. You must have seen him, he was too big to be overlooked. What a delightful squint he had! What a ridiculous likeness there was between him and the roast pig he was carving! I was wondering all dinner-time how that man contrived to cut up that pig; for one eye was fixed upon the ceiling, and the other leering very affectionately at me. It was very droll; was it not?”
“And what do you intend doing with yourself when you arrive in Canada?” said I.
“Find out some large hollow tree, and live like Bruin in winter by sucking my paws. In the summer there will be plenty of mast and acorns to satisfy the wants of an abstemious fellow.”
“But, joking apart, my dear fellow,” said my husband, anxious to induce him to abandon a scheme so hopeless, “do you think that you are at all qualified for a life of toil and hardship?”
“Are you?” returned Tom, raising his large, bushy, black eyebrows to the top of his forehead, and fixing his leaden eyes steadfastly upon his interrogator, with an air of such absurd gravity that we burst into a hearty laugh.
“Now what do you laugh for? I am sure I asked you a very serious question.”
“But your method of putting it is so unusual that you must excuse us for laughing.”
“I don't want you to weep,” said Tom; “but as to our qualifications, Moodie, I think them pretty equal. I know you think otherwise, but I will explain. Let me see; what was I going to say?—ah, I have it! You go with the intention of clearing land, and working for yourself, and doing a great deal. I have tried that before in New South Wales, and I know that it won't answer. Gentlemen can't work like labourers, and if they could, they won't—it is not in them, and that you will find out. You expect, by going to Canada, to make your fortune, or at least secure a comfortable independence. I anticipate no such results; yet I mean to go, partly out of a whim, partly to satisfy my curiosity whether it is a better country than New South Wales; and lastly, in the hope of bettering my condition in a small way, which at present is so bad that it can scarcely be worse. I mean to purchase a farm with the three hundred pounds I received last week from the sale of my father's property; and if the Canadian soil yields only half what Mr. C—— says it does, I need not starve. But the refined habits in which you have been brought up, and your unfortunate literary propensities—(I say unfortunate, because you will seldom meet people in a colony who can or will sympathise with you in these pursuits)—they will make you an object of mistrust and envy to those who cannot appreciate them, and will be a source of constant mortification and disappointment to yourself. Thank God! I have no literary propensities; but in spite of the latter advantage, in all probability I shall make no exertion at all; so that your energy, damped by disgust and disappointment, and my laziness, will end in the same thing, and we shall both return like bad pennies to our native shores. But, as I have neither wife nor child to involve in my failure, I think, without much self-flattery, that my prospects are better than yours.”
This was the longest speech I ever heard Tom utter; and, evidently astonished at himself, he sprang abruptly from the table, overset a cup of coffee into my lap, and wishing us good day (it was eleven o'clock at night), he ran out of the house.
There was more truth in poor Tom's words than at that moment we were willing to allow; for youth and hope were on our side in those days, and we were most ready to believe the suggestions of the latter.
My husband finally determined to emigrate to Canada, and in the hurry and bustle of a sudden preparation to depart, Tom and his affairs for a while were forgotten.
How dark and heavily did that frightful anticipation weigh upon my heart! As the time for our departure drew near, the thought of leaving my friends and native land became so intensely painful that it haunted me even in sleep. I seldom awoke without