LIFE IN CANADA.

BAILEY.

  DURING one of his summer excursions, Mr. Peyton stopped for a few days at Niagara, on his way, with his family, to Montreal and Quebec. While walking about on the Canada side of the Falls, stopping now and then to examine and admire the grand spectacle from some new point of view, Mrs. Peyton's eye was caught by a beautiful flower swaying on its slender stem on a steep slope, high above her head.

  The hillside was covered with broken, shingling rocks, and from the midst of these, without even a blade of grass to bear it company, grew up this little delicate flower. Unheeding the overshadowing grandeur of its mighty rival, yet strengthened and refreshed by the few drops of spray now and then flung upon it out of the profusion of its abundance, it went on gathering in some mysterious way every day new strength and beauty from the uncongenial

  There was a vein of poetry in Virginia's mind leading her to invest material objects with conscious life and meaning, and the voices of the flower and the cataract spoke as distinctly to her heart as if her ear had heard their uttered words. She was fond too of memorials, and had retained her girlish habit of collecting and preserving flowers and leaves, or some other characteristic memento, from all places of note she visited.

  She wished to obtain this flower, which had awakened such a train of pleasant thoughts in her heart; and as Mr. Peyton was a little distance in advance with an elderly lady on his arm, she attempted to climb the slope herself. But the stones slipped under her feet, and, recalling a fatal accident that had occurred near there not long before, she reluctantly gave up the attempt.

  "I will get it for you, ma'am," said a voice behind her, and a man sprang up the difficult ascent, and, returning, offered her the little blossom.

  She took it, and looking at him to thank him, recognized an old acquaintance.

  "Why, Edward," she exclaimed, "is it possible!"

  "Yes, Mrs. Peyton," said he; "I knew you as soon as I saw you walking across the bridge, and I ran down to ask you about all the people in Clinton. I was afraid, if I waited, you might get over the other side."

  "You wouldn't venture over there, Edward?" asked Mrs. Peyton, with a smile.

  "No, indeed, ma'am, I had too hard work to get here to put myself in the least danger again."

  Mrs. Peyton gave him all the information she could recall of their mutual acquaintances in Clinton, for they had been born and brought up in the same town; and though the broad gulf that separates the serf from the freeborn, the black from the white race, lay between them, yet integrity and a manliness that commanded respect on the one hand, with a kind and sympathetic nature on the other, spanned the gulf, and made them meet with a degree of pleasure and interest that only those can understand who have been brought up from their infancy to look upon the negro as a member of the same household.

  "And now," said Mrs. Peyton, when she had finished telling him of the welfare of his mother and sisters, as well as of all his other friends, "how did you manage to get here?"

  "It was a great deal more easy than I thought it would be," replied Edward; "do you remember Miss Lucy's wedding, Miss Virginia?" unconsciously using the most familiar name.

  "Yes, it was not long after mine."

  "Well, my old master sent me two or three days beforehand with her silver, up in the country whar she was going to live. The other servants had been taking up every thing else to make the house comfortable, and I was to take care of every thing, and have it all in order for her when she came. I had been contriving ways and means for a long time for running away, and had had, I reckon, twenty different plans, but they didn't come to any thing. Still, my mind was made up, that if I had to wait forty year, I would run away at the end of it, if I had a fair chance, for my old master treated me so bad that I never had a happy moment. He didn't beat me so much, but he didn't give me a minute's peace, and he used to call me all the hard names he could lay his tongue to. But, yet, he used to trust me with all his business, and he had made a standing order that whenever he got drunk—and he used to have a frolic every two or three weeks—I should attend to him. I have had as much as three thousand dollars in my care at a time, when he had been selling his crops and got drunk before he put the money in the bank; and yet, though he never

  "I know he was a hard master," said Virginia; "there was not a person in Clinton who was not glad when they found you were really off."

  "I took the silver up to Miss Lucy's place," continued Edward, "and then I thought, as they would all be so busy at home that it would be at least a week before they would find out that I was gone, that I could not have a better time, and so I started. I had ten dollars, that I had earned in different ways, and had saved unbeknown to my master, or he would have taken it away, and that, with the clothes I had on, was all I had in the world. That lasted me till I got to some little town in New York, and then when I was not more than a day's journey from here, I was taken sick, and had to lie there a week. Some of the colored folks about took me in, and took care of me till I was well again, and as soon as I could hold myself up, I set out to finish my journey on foot. That was the hardest part of the way, for I was so weak I could hardly crawl along, and I felt every moment my old master's hand on my shoulder. But I never heard any thing from him, and I was so glad when my feet touched this ground, that it seemed to me I felt well right away. I have been mighty homesick too, since I have been here, and wanted to see all the people in

  "Have you ever wanted to go back?" asked Mrs. Peyton.

  "No, Miss Virginia, I might if I had had a different master, for I had a very hard time the first winter here. I 'most froze to death, and starved too. But I have a good place now, and am doing very well."

  "Do the people generally treat you better than they did at home?"

  "No, Miss Virginia, nothing like as well. They don't seem as natural to us, nor we to them, maybe, as those we were raised with. Somehow, they don't seem to have the same consideration for us, and I know some here that would be very glad to get back if they were sure they would not be punished. But that's not my feelings. I wouldn't 'vise any one to come here, though, that wa'n't willing to work harder, and rough it as much as they ever did in their lives."

  By this time they had overtaken Mr. Peyton, who also knew and recognized Edward. He asked him many questions as to the condition of the colored people in Canada; and Edward's answers, while showing that he had observed and thought a great

  The same exclusion from all places open to the meanest white man, the same disregard of their comfort, and open contempt for their color, made Canada any thing but a pleasant place of refuge. "It is impossible," thought Mr. Peyton, while meditating on this mysterious dispensation of Providence, this placing one race in the midst of another, whose feelings instinctively rebel against all union on the footing of equality; "it is impossible but that some great purpose is to be worked out by these great means."

  "When I was a boy, I accompanied my father to Quebec," said Mr. Peyton; "we had a servant with us, a man named Isaac, who left us soon after we reached Canada. He must be an old man now. Have you ever happened to meet him?"

  "Yes, sir," replied Edward; "he is living at a little village not far from this place. It is a settlement of colored people, and if you would like to see how most of them live here, you might go there. I know Isaac very well. He often talks about old Virginny to me, and says he was a great fool for leaving it. But he's most always sick, and that

  "I will stop to see him," said Mr. Peyton, "for he was a good servant."

  Accordingly, a few days after, taking Edward as his guide, Mr. Peyton drove over to the little collection of hovels and wretched tenements that was dignified with the name of village. There was not a house in it that seemed able to protect the inmates from the changes of the weather, even during the summer months; and it was hard to imagine how they could make themselves comfortable in the cold weather.

  The nucleus of the place was a large frame house, that had been built by some wealthy land-owner in that part of the country. But he had long since deserted it as untenantable, and it had fallen to its present occupants as a matter of course. With its paint washed off, its boards dropping away, and with hardly a pane of glass left unbroken in the windows, it still was by far the best dwelling in the place. The others were mere shantys, or huts, put up hastily when it was found impossible to obtain shelter in the big house, and intended at first only for temporary abodes. But they were never unoccupied, for as fast as one family vacated them another made its appearance ready to take their places.

  Mr. Peyton could hardly help smiling as he observed how little change of place or position seemed to affect the strongly-marked yet unobtrusive characteristics of the African. Here in Canada he found the same inertness, the same easy yielding to circumstances and aversion to labor, and the same good-nature that had so tried his patience in Virginia. Every other man and woman had a pipe in their mouths, and, dirty and ragged, they lounged about in the warm sun, basking in its beams, and wearing the placid self-complacent look of those who had voted care an impertinence, and labor an unnecessary degradation.

  As he observed them with the eye of a philosopher and philanthropist, they gazed back upon him with the open-eyed curiosity of the vacant mind. Not often had such a presence dignified the path they fondly called a street. Mr. Peyton had the true patrician stamp, and it gave a value to his least word or act far above its intrinsic worth. From the inexplicable charm of this influence, at once innate and adventitious, no one can wholly free themselves, much less the uneducated, who yield to its sweet authority an obedience not the less entire that it springs as much from love as fear.

  It was easy for the gazers to discover that he was a Southern planter; many of them knew the

  "If I didn't know dat old mas'r had been dead dese many years, I should say dat was him," thought old Isaac, as Mr. Peyton drew near the door in which he was sitting. When the strange gentleman stopped before him, the old man raised his trembling form, and gazed with the anxious, uncertain look of age in his face.

  "Don't you remember me, Isaac?" asked Mr. Peyton.

  "Oh! it's Mas'r Charles! it's Mas'r Charles!" and Isaac's whole face was convulsed with emotion, while tears streamed down his cheeks. "I never tought to see you or any of de fam'ly dis side de grave again, Mas'r Charles; and you was a little boy when I lef you; but I know'd you as soon as you smiled; and I should ha' know'd you by dat any whar."

  "You have had a long life given to you, Isaac," continued Mr. Peyton.

  "Yes, Mas'r Charles, I knows dat; but mostly I feels like saying, with ole father Jacob, 'Few and

  "You are happy now, then," said Mr. Peyton.

  "Yes, Mas'r Charles, my fight is mos' over, and now I'm waitin' with patience for de comin' of de Lord. I feel fo' true that He won't try me much longer."

  "Is your wife still living?"

  "No, Mas'r Charles; dat was my fust great 'fliction. I had worked hard five years to get money enough to buy her freedom, and den she came here and took sick directly, and only lived seven month. Den I bought my two boys; dey was little boys, and I didn't have much trouble in gettin' 'em here; but one of 'em died two year ago, and I has his two chillun to see to, while dere mother and my other son works for dem and me too. But 'tain't much to work for me now, and dough dey's as willin' as can be, I feels dat I sha'n't trouble dem long."

  "Have you lived here ever since you left us?" asked Mr. Peyton.

  "Oh, no, Mas'r Charles! dis is a mighty poor place to live in. I used to be a waiter at hotels and gentlemen's families till I was too old, and den I

  Mr. Peyton remained some time longer talking with this old servant of his house, and left him at last cheered by a visit from one of that family he

  When a person's thoughts are turned steadily in one direction, it is wonderful how much can be seen in a short space of time; and Mr. Peyton's investigations, thorough and patient as they were, only served to convince him more and more that Canada was no pleasant abiding-place for the blacks, and that, held far apart from all intercourse and communion with those who occupied the superior position, regarded as machines rather than as living souls, with little attention paid to their religious training, it was fully as probable that they would deteriorate as improve by a residence in that country. He saw nothing to make him feel that it would be any advantage to the laborers on his plantation to change their residence from Virginia to Canada. On the contrary, he became daily more convinced that his servants held decidedly the most advantageous position, both for their comfort in this world and opportunity for preparation for the next. He felt that he would not be willing to expose those who had been given into his charge—for whose temporal and eternal welfare he had been trained from his child-

  With a single, earnest wish to benefit his servants at any self-sacrifice—a wish that time, and thought, and patient endeavor had elevated almost to a holy passion, and made one of the ruling motives of his life—he felt that it would be unjust, both to whites and blacks, to throw upon society those who have as yet proved themselves a burden and a drain, rather than an assistance, whenever the conduct of their life is given in their own hands.

  Of course, only the masses are here intended. There have been noble exceptions; and, freed from the crushing superiority of the white man, they have risen up more quickly and in greater numbers than their best friends could have ventured to hope—but not in America.