during the last days numerous converts are made and received by baptism
into the church. This meeting is looked forward too by the colonists
with many mingled feelings. By the grave and good it is hailed as an
event of sacred importance, and by the gay and thoughtless as a season
of sight-seeing and dress-displaying. Those in whose neighbourhood it
was last year are glad it is not be so this time; and those near the
place it is to be held, are calculating the sheep and poultry, the
molasses and flour it will take to supply the numerous guests they
expect on the occasion--open tables being kept at taverns, and private
houses are so no longer, but hospitably receive all who come. No harvest
is reaped by exorbitant charges for lodging, and all that is expected in
return, is the same clever treatment when their turn comes. This
convocation, occurring in the leisure spell between the end of planting
and the commencement of haying, is consequently no hindrance to the
agricultural part of the community; and old and young "off they come"
from Miramichi, from Acadia, and the Oromocto, in shay and waggon,
steam-boat and catamaran, on horseback or on foot, as best they can.
This day, one towards the conclusion, the large frame building was
crowded to excess, and outside were gathered groups, as may be seen in
some countries around the catholic chapels. Within, the long tiers of
benches display as fair an array of fashion and flowers as would be
seen in any similar congregation in any country. The days of going to
meeting in home-spun and raw hide moccasins are vanishing fast all
through the province. These are the solid constituents of every-day
apparel, but for holidays, even the bush maiden from the far-off
settlements of the gulph shore has a lace veil and silken shawl, and
these she arranges with infinitely more taste and grace than many a
damsel whose eye has never lost sight of the clearings. By far the
greater portion of the assembly have the dark eyes and intellectual
expression of face which declares them of American origin; and,