Canadian, of course, though I once was an Englishman. I array myself
in strange raiment, thick and woollen, of many colours; my linen is
coarse and sometimes superseded by flannel; I wear a cast-off fur
cap on my head and moccasins on my feet. I have grown a beard and a
fierce moustache. I have made no money and won no friends except the
simple settlers around me here. And I shall grow old and grey in
your service, my Muskoka. I shall be forty-one on my next birthday.
Then will come fifty-one, another ten years and sixty-one. All to be
lived here? Yes, I have sworn it. Not Arcady, not Utopia, only
Muskoka, but very dear to me. There is the forest primeval! I know
everything in it from the Indian pipe--clammy white thing, but how
pretty!--to that great birch there with the bark peeling off in
pieces a yard wide. There is the lovely Shadow river. Masses of
cardinal flowers grow there in the summer, and when I take my boat
up its dark waters I feel that no human being has felt its beauty so
before. I think, for a small river it is the loveliest in the world.
And as to my larder now, why I am going to make my Christmas dinner
off a piece or pork and ask for nothing better! I shall have a
glorious appetite, which is the main point. The bell again!"

Yes, and the snow birds, too, flying round the porch of the little
church. It is a very small and plain edifice and not over warm, and
the officiating clergyman, who has just driven eighteen miles with
the prospect of eighteen back after service, hurries the proceedings
somewhat. There is a harmonium played by the tall man, and there is
a choir consisting of himself and a small boy. In place of the usual
Anglican hymns two carols are sung by the choir, which have the
quaintest effect in such a place, and which appear to interest and
even excite one of the congregation. This is a man of middle age,
most richly dressed with a certain foreign air about him and