boyhood days, when I was his only companion at work. The audience was small, but the interest was great. Stories about horses, about fishing, hunting, and boating on the Niagara, and stories of the war, which I could compare with the histories, and seldom found them seriously at variance. The interest I manifested in these latter stories seemed to cause him to fear he was telling me too much, that he was arousing in me the soldier spirit, which is latent in most boys.

These conversations occurred principally during the winter of 1846 and 1847. I was then completing my thirteenth year, one year younger than he had been when the war of 1812 closed. He and I worked alone, finishing off the inside of a frame house for James McGlashan in the village of Hurontario, which is now a part of the present town of Collingwood, Ontario, Canada. It was the only time I worked alone with him for any length of time, and the memory of it is pleasant. I was a listener and questioner, and because I lent an appreciative ear, and asked thoughtful questions, I drew out his whole fund of observed facts and incidents, as well as his opinions and judgment regarding them. A previous reading of an abbreviated history enabled me to do this, and fix the relation of many of the events he gave me.

In a reply in regard to what caused the war, he said, the Americans claimed that it was in brief "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights"; the British claimed extraordinary rights and privileges on the high seas; among those was the right to search foreign, or at least American vessels, for British seamen, and if they found any, they would take them away. He gave the stories of the thirteen colonies resisting England; the Boston tea party; the battles of Bunker Hill and Lexington; the character and career of George Washington. He spoke of him as a most skilful general; also as being a good man, and especially kind and considerate of his men, as he would not place them where risks were great.

Though a thorough Britisher, father had nothing but respect for Americans in their efforts for independence and national autonomy. This was at a time when the war feeling had not by any means subsided. Politicians in the United

States, with their spread-eagle oratory, kept it vigorously alive, and of course provoked a counter spirit in Canada. This will show that he entertained no prejudice against Americans, which if he had, it would not prevent his telling squarely the truth; but his information was too general, and his ideas and mental make-up too Christian and cosmopolitan to entertain a bias or prejudice against any people. The same may be said of grandfather; as a soldier he was intensely loyal to his flag and country, but, beyond this, loved truth and justice and fair play generally. Besides this he had an American wife, who retained much of her old love for the American people. On all these accounts, father's remembrances in regard to the war and the events of the early days were much better than the ordinary unofficial information of the time.

Some of his stories were about events that transpired before his time. One, I well remember, except the names; father's memory in this respect was good, but mine is not. A party of about six U. E. Loyalists, who at the beginning of the war of the Revolution left their homes in the Eastern States, and travelled on foot through New York, which was then a wilderness, crossed the Niagara River, and came into Canada, arriving in the fall of the year. Father afterwards personally knew some of these men, and no doubt got his stories quite direct. I knew many of the descendants of those U. E. Loyalists, and one of the originals, my sister Mary's grandmother, Mrs. Frank; when I saw her in the year 1850, she was well started in the nineties, and lived for some years afterward.

When this U. E. party was crossing the Niagara, on one of the large islands in the river they observed an abundance of small wild fruits, and nuts of all the kinds common to the country; so after some prospecting for the location of their new homes, they returned to this island, and built a shanty, with a small addition for a storeroom, which they filled with nuts. They also shot some wild hogs, the progeny of some pigs that had been left by some of the early French voyagers. With this food, and in this home, they passed the winter, and came out in the spring, fat and hearty looking, but really weak