early days had been passed in hunting the red deer or the red man on the
Prairie fields--there, with the true spirit of the old American, he had
learned to treat the Indian as "varment," although a kindlier feeling
was awakened towards them in this country, where white as well as red
were recipients of England's bounty, and many a tale of wild pathos or
dark horror has he told of the experience of his youth with the people
of the wild. In New Brunswick his days had passed more peacefully. He
sat this evening with his chair poised in that aerial position on one
leg which none but an American can attain. Ambitious emigrants, wishing
to be thought cute, attempt this delicate point of Yankee character, but
their awkwardness falling short of the easy swing necessary for the
purpose, often brings them to the ground. A beautiful English cherry
tree, with its snowy wreathes in full blow, stood before him; he had
raised it from the seed, and loved to look upon it. It had evidently
been the object of his meditations, and served him now as a type
wherewith to illustrate his remarks respecting the meeting we had
attended--like those professors of religion we to-day heard, he said,
was his beautiful cherry tree. It gave forth fair green leaves of
promise and bright truth-seeming blossoms, but in summer, when he sought
for fruit there was none; and false as it, were they of words so fair
and deeds so dark, and he'd "double sooner trust one who laughed more
and prayed less, than those same whining preachers." This was the old
man's opinion, not only respecting the baptists, but all other sects as
well. What his own ideas of religion were I never could make out.
Universalism I fancied it was, but differing much from the theories of
those evanescent preachers who sometimes flashed like meteors through
the land, leaving doubt and recklessness in their path. The first truths
of Christianity had been imparted to him, and these, mingling with his
own innate ideas of veneration, formed his faith; as original, though
more lofty in its aspirations, than the wild Indian's who tells of the