Man _versus_
nature--the successive assaults of perishing humanity upon the almost
impregnable fortresses of the eternal forests--this was the struggle
of Canadian civilization, and its hard-won triumphs were bodied forth
in the scattered roofs of these cheap habitations. Seen now through
soft gradations of vapoury gloom, they took on a poetic significance,
as tenderly intangible as the romantic halo which the mist of years
loves to weave about the heads of departed pioneers, who, for the most
part, lived out their lives in plain, grim style, without any thought
of posing as "conquering heroes" in the eyes of succeeding generations.
From the portico of one of these dwellings, under a wind-swayed sign
which advertised it to be a place of rest and refreshment, stepped a
man of more than middle age, whose nervous gait and anxious face
betokened a mind ill at ease. He had the look and air of a highly
respectable old servitor,--one who had followed the family to whom he
was bound by ties of life-long service to a country of which he
strongly disapproved, not because it offered a poor field for his own
advancement, but because, to his mind, its crude society and narrow
opportunities ill became the distinction of the Old World family to
whose fortunes he was devoted.
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