heart was not here, and she sighed to return to her native land, where
the streams were brighter, and the grass grew greener than elsewhere.
Her friends, vexed at her obstinacy in determining so firmly to return,
would give her no assistance for this purpose, fancying that she felt
but that nostalgic sickness felt by all on their first arrival in
America, and that like others she would become reconciled in time. But
she was firm in her resolve, and to procure funds wherewithal to return
she commenced teaching a school, for which her education had well
qualified her. It was not likely that such a girl as Grace would, in
this land of marrying and giving in marriage, be without fonder
solicitations to induce her to remain, and a tall blue nose, rejoicing
in the appellation of Leonidas van Wort, and lord of six hundred noble
acres, was heard to declare one fall, that she, for an Irish girl, was
"raal downright good-looking," and guessed he knew which way "his tracks
would lay when snow came." Snow did come, and Leonidas, arrayed in his
best "go-to-meeting style," geared up his sleigh, and what with bear
skins and bells, fancying himself and appurtenances enough to charm the
heart of any maid or matron in the back woods, set off to spark Grace
Marley. "Sparking," the term used in New Brunswick for courtship, now
that the old fashion of "bundling" is gone out, occupies much of the
attention (as, indeed, where does it not?) of young folks. They, for
this purpose, take Moore's plan of lengthening their days, by "stealing
a few hours from the night," and generally breathe out their tender
vows, not beneath the "milk-white thorn," but by the soft dim light of
the birch-wood fire; the older members of the family retiring and
leaving the lovers to their own sweet society.

Although it has been sometimes observed that mothers who, in their own
young days, have been versed in this custom, insist most pertinaciously
in sitting out the wooer, in spite of insinuations as to the pleasure