stand, as it were, on the brink of the grave; but their sons and their grandsons, their daughters and their granddaughters, nourish in the midst of prosperity and comfort, of which those who went before them were the creators. The shanty and the wigwam and the log hut have long since given place to the mansion of brick and stone; and the hand-sleigh and the rude cart to the strong waggon and the well-appointed carriage. Where there was but one miserable grist-mill, there are now mills and factories of various kinds. And not only are there spacious schools under the control of those who erected and made use of them for their children, but the heavy grievance which existed in 1825 has long since been a thing of the past. The little chapel of logs and shingle—18 feet by 20—in which the settlers of that day knelt in gratitude to God, has for many years been replaced by a noble stone church, through whose painted windows the Canadian sunlight streams gloriously, and in which two thousand worshippers listen with the old Irish reverence to the words of their pastor. The tones of the pealing organs swell in solemn harmony, where the simple chaunt of the first settlers was raised in the midst of the wilderness; and for miles round may the voice of the great bell, swinging in its lofty tower, be heard in the calm of the Lord's Day, summoning the children of St. Patrick to worship in the faith of their fathers. Well may the white-haired patriarch, as he remembers the sailing from Cork, the passage across the mighty ocean, the journey up the St. Lawrence, the cutting of the road between the two lakes, the difficulties of the shallows, and the dangers of the rapids of the Otanabee, the camp in the wilderness, the fever and the ague that racked his bones in the early years, the hard toil and stern privations; well may he be surprised at what he now beholds—at the wondrous change wrought by the skill and courage of man, animated by the most potent of all incentives—the spirit of hope and the certainty of reward.
