I Mean To Purchase A Farm
With The Three Hundred Pounds I Received Last Week From The Sale
Of My Father's Property; And If The Canadian Soil Yields Only Half
What Mr. C - - Says It Does, I Need Not Starve.
But the refined
habits in which you have been brought up, and your unfortunate
literary propensities - (I say unfortunate,
Because you will seldom
meet people in a colony who can or will sympathise with you in
these pursuits) - they will make you an object of mistrust and envy
to those who cannot appreciate them, and will be a source of
constant mortification and disappointment to yourself. Thank God!
I have no literary propensities; but in spite of the latter
advantage, in all probability I shall make no exertion at all;
so that your energy, damped by disgust and disappointment, and my
laziness, will end in the same thing, and we shall both return
like bad pennies to our native shores. But, as I have neither
wife nor child to involve in my failure, I think, without much
self-flattery, that my prospects are better than yours."
This was the longest speech I ever heard Tom utter; and, evidently
astonished at himself, he sprang abruptly from the table, overset a
cup of coffee into my lap, and wishing us GOOD DAY (it was eleven
o'clock at night), he ran out of the house.
There was more truth in poor Tom's words than at that moment we
were willing to allow; for youth and hope were on our side in those
days, and we were most ready to believe the suggestions of the
latter.
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