"I suppose you are, dear; though I would like to have you stay at your
lessons for one more year anyway. What kind of work would you like best?"

"That's not a hard question to answer, mother. I want to be what father
was."

The mother's face grew pale at this reply, and for some few moments she
made no response.

* * * * *

The march of civilization on a great continent means loss as well as
gain. The opening up of the country for settlement, the increase and
spread of population, the making of the wilderness to blossom as the
rose, compel the gradual retreat and disappearance of interesting
features that can never be replaced. The buffalo, the beaver, and the elk
have gone; the bear, the Indian, and the forest in which they are both
most at home, are fast following.

Along the northern border of settlement in Canada there are flourishing
villages and thriving hamlets to-day where but a few years ago the
verdurous billows of the primeval forest rolled in unbroken grandeur. The
history of any one of these villages is the history of all. An open space
beside the bank of a stream or the margin of a lake presented itself to
the keen eye of the woodranger traversing the trackless waste of forest
as a fine site for a lumber camp. In course of time the lumber camp grew
into a depot from which other camps, set still farther back in the depths
of the "limits," are supplied. Then the depot develops into a settlement
surrounded by farms; the settlement gathers itself into a village with