“‘But alas ! that we should go,’
Sang the farewell voices then,
From the homesteads warm and low,
By the brook and in the glen;
But woe for that sweet shade
Of the flowering orchard trees,
Where first our children played
Midst the birds and honey-bees;
But oh! the grey church-tower,
And the sound of Sabbath bell,
And the shelter'd garden bower,
We have bid them all farewell —
Home, home, and friends, farewell!’”

—Mrs. Hemans.

WE sailed from England in the month of March, 1871, on board the steamship Peruvian, of the Allan Line. We had spent the two previous days in Liverpool while father was looking after our household effects and seeing then) safely stowed away on board, for though mother had not been allowed to bring with her one-half of the things she wished to, there was a pretty mountainous pile of baggage all the same. Two or three of our friends came with us to Liverpool to see us off, and, so far as my recollections go, this day or two in Liverpool was not at all unpleasant. We girls were delighted with the shops and could have spent all the time looking in the windows at so many gay and pretty things. We had not much money to spend, it is true, and what we had was expended on such small necessaries as pins, needles, buttons, tapes, cotton, etc., of which we laid in a stock sufficient to last us for the rest of our lives, having an idea that we should never be able to obtain such commodities in Canada. Sue was most anxious about the hairpins, for it was the time chignons were worn, and Sue had just started an enormous one. She had invested all her small capital in hairpins, but still was doubtful whether she had sufficient in case she lived to be very old. so the last evening begged another half-crown from father and rushed out madly to buy more. How many times we have laughed together over the funny ideas we had about this country. We were nearly as bad as the Irishman you have read of who, when he first saw' New York from the deck of the vessel on which he had crossed the Atlantic, cried out, to the great amusement of the other passengers, “That New York! Holy Saints preserve us, and sure I thought New York was a howling wilderness.” I think there are quite a few folks across the water who are about as ignorant of what awaits them when they come here.

The morning we sailed was dull and wet. Doesn’t it always rain in Liverpool? Poor Bet, just before we got on the tender which was waiting to take us aboard, stamped her foot on the wharf and said with a touch of pathos, “My last step on English ground.” Strange to say, she is almost the only one of us who has never returned for a visit to England. I have been several times, and father and mother both went back on a visit, so Bet’s speech was quite prophetical.

Our voyage was rough, cold and unpleasant. We were all seasick and miserable the first few days. After that we revived somewhat, with the exception of poor Sue, who is a most miserable sailor. She is one of those unfortunates whom the very sight and smell of the sea seem to act upon as an emetic. She is sick before the vessel starts, and continues so till she reaches land again. Our dear mother bore up well, and was the comfort and support of the whole lot What should we have done without her?

We landed at Portland, Maine, and went from thence by rail to Toronto, passing through Montreal on our way. It was bitterly cold when we arrived, late in the evening, in Toronto; everything was frozen up hard and fast. Poor mother, tired and worn out with the journey and the care of all the children, declared she would go no farther. “She wasn’t going to the backwoods,” she said, “to be devoured by wild beasts or savage Indians,” for we had very vague ideas then of these northern wilds. We young ones had read some of Cooper’s novels, and the very name of Indians made our blood curdle. Why one night, when the “Bab” in his sleep seized hold of Bet’s topknot, she roused the whole household with her shrieks of murder, thinking the Indians were scalping her. So you can imagine, when our minds were thus filled with terror of the backwoods, how strongly we all supported mother in her desire to stay in Toronto, at least for a while. My father perhaps yielded to our persuasions more readily than he otherwise would have done from the fact that he was feeling anything but well himself; the strain had told upon him, and he had a touch of his old complaint, so I think was not sorry to rest for a while.

To find a place to rest in, though, seemed as if it would prove a considerable difficulty. The first night we had slept at an hotel near the station, but our expenses had already been so heavy, and the family purse was growing so light, that cheaper lodgings must be found, and economy, strict economy, be the order of the day. So, after beakfast the first morning, mother, accompanied by Bet and Sue, leaving me in charge of the younger ones, started off in search of a suitable boarding-house. Oh ! what a weary quest it proved. The doors they knocked at, the steps they climbed, the streets they traversed with no success. “ Just out from England, six in family”!—slam went the doors in their astonished faces.

Here I must make a slight digression in order to dispel an illusion which we, in common, I think, with all newly arrived emigrants, fondly hugged to our breasts, namely, that the words “just out from England,” act as a magic charm to open every heart, throw wide every door, obtain instant employment and insure highest wages. What a fatal mistake! No words you could utter would so surely destroy all your hopes. How many times have I seen, since living in Toronto, as I have been gazing from my window into the street, the forlorn looking groups walking along, dragging babies and bundles, with “just out from England” stamped upon them as plainly as if it had been done with a branding-iron, so that all who run could read. How my heart went out in sympathy to those homeless wanderers in a strange land. What advice would I like to have given them, every one, if I only had the chance? Just this—“Forget, my dear friends, as soon as you possibly can, the land of your birth, whether it be England, Scotland, Ireland or Wales! Don’t ‘make haste’ to do so, but ‘hurry up.’ ‘Hustle’ to rid yourself of your ‘Cockney twang,’ or your ‘country dialect,’ whichever it happens to be. Don’t, on applying for work, meekly ask in a hangdog kind of a way, ‘ Please, can I speak to the guv’ner?’ but step up smartly and say, ‘Is the boss in? ’Commence ‘ right away ’to call your dinner lunch and your tea supper; don’t talk of your waistcoat and trousers—say vest and pants; don’t say fortnight, it is an unknown duration of time here, just say 'two weeks.’ When your wife visits the stores, not shops, tell her to ask for a ‘spool of thread,’ not a ‘reel of cotton.’ When she wants calico tell her to ask for cotton, when she wants print ask for calico. Don’t tell your children, when they are crying, to ‘give over and stop roaring,’ but yell at them to 'shut up and quit that squalling.’ Don’t try to comfort them by sending for a ‘pen’orth of sweeties,’ but five cents’ worth of candies. Don't speak of ‘buckets,’ say pails, and if they unfortunately ‘run out’ say leak. Don’t, above all, speak of ‘pubs,’ or visit them either. Do your level best to give the letter in its proper place in words to which it belongs, don’t use it as an advance guard before every vowel.

I might go on with “don’ts” unlimited; but even attention to these few I have mentioned will be of service, as you will find out if you are not too wise in your own conceit to give them a fair trial. If I had attended to them myself when I came a “green horn ” to this country I might have been saved considerable trouble and not a few mortifications ; but, like some others who have come after me, I was full of conceit and aired my ignorance on every possible occasion. Well do I remember, when I took a situation in a store on Yonge Street, the first mistake I made, I was left in charge while the owner was at breakfast. A small boy entered and advancing to the counter asked for a “copper pencil.” “What do you mean?” I said, looking at him rather disdainfully, and when he repeated his request, “‘ Copper pencils,’ I never heard of such a thing! You must mean a lead pencil.” “No!” “Colored pencils, red or blue?” I suggested. He shook his small head vigorously. “Well, I give it up,” I said, and told him in a rather high and lofty manner he had better go home to his mother and ask her to explain what a “copper pencil” was. The little chap made for the shop door, and I following him to see which way he went, overheard his remark to another small boy, evidently waiting for him, “The blooming idiot in here don’t know what a copper pencil is,” at the same time showing the cent in his hand. In a moment it flashed across me what he meant, and, opening the door, I beckoned him back and gave him the pencil he wanted in exchange for his copper—feeling pretty small, too, and thankful in my heart there was no one in the store at the time but myself.

But we are leaving mother and Ret too long on those doorsteps, so let us return to them. After two or three days spent in trudging around in the snow and sleet, the March winds howling round the bleak street corners (which it does with a more special vim in Toronto than anywhere else, I think), mother succeeded in coaxing a good-natured Irish woman, named Derrigan—who kept an untidy looking boarding house near Yonge Street—to take us in till my father was better and able to look round and decide what we should do. She could only let us have two bedrooms, so we were packed like sardines in a box (the eight of us). Still we were thankful to get even this and wisely determined to make the best of it. Fortunately we were all young and vigorous, and the Hathaways are blessed with an inexhaustible supply of humor. You remember George Macdonald calls it “the God-given sense of humor,” and I quite agree with him, for what is there helps us so much when things go wrong and everybody seems at loggerheads as to be able to see the funny side of it all and meet our troubles with a laugh instead of a frown. I believe at this time my father and mother would have become quite homesick and despondent had it not been for our lively appreciation of everything going on around us, our unceasing questions, and the fun we took out of even the unpleasant things.

Oh! such discussions as we used to have about what we were each one going to earn towards replenishing the family exchequer. Bet and Sue had a fancy for millinery. They had always been very successful in adorning themselves, why shouldn’t they adorn others? Joe, who was now a strong, good-looking lad of sixteen, wanted to go into the country to some farmer and learn more of Canadian ways of farming. I was fondly hoping to get a situation as daily governess, as I had received a fairly good education and a smattering of accomplishments.

Alas for all our talk and plans, nothing but disappointments awaited us.

Bet and Sue, after a hard week’s work tramping around the city, returned one afternoon in high glee. They informed us triumphantly that they were both engaged on trial, and to go the next morning to a wholesale millinery place. They came back at dinner time next day not quite so jubilant, in fact we remarked amongst ourselves after they had returned to their work for the afternoon, “they both looked rather depressed.” Shortly after six they once more arrived home, this time with very sad countenances, eyes red, noses ditto.

They soon poured the story of their woes into our sympathizing ears. The forewoman of the trimming department had given them, in the morning of their arrival, a dozer: cheap straw hats, and one trimmed as a pattern. They had faithfully and laboriously copied this, and in their estimation the copies looked even better than the original; but when the forewoman came around on her tour of inspection at the end of the day, and Bet ventured meekly to ask what remuneration they might expect per dozen for trimming, she savagely took hold of one of the hats, said their work was no good, tore off the trimming, stormed away at them for some time and then ended up by saying, “You’ll have to come two or three months and then we’ll talk about paying.” Poor girls! we did our best to comfort them, and they didn't go back.

More tramping followed, then another engagement; this time at a factory with sewing-machines run by steam power. Here they might have stayed awhile had not an accident happened to one of the young girls employed there. She had a beautiful head of hair, which she wore hanging over her shoulders, and, by some terrible mischance, it got caught in the machinery, winding up until her scalp was nearly torn off. The effect of this accident was to make the other girls very nervous, and a few days after, some small article dropping between the revolving wheels caused them to make a loud rattling noise. The girls at work, startled by this, and afraid of another accident, all made a wild rush for the narrow stairway. Crazed with fear as they were, their wild stampede would no doubt have ended disastrously for many of them, had it not been for the presence of mind of the foreman, who rushed in front of the opening to the stairway and caught hold of the two foremost girls, one of whom was my sister Sue, telling them to go back to their work, and explaining the reason of the noise. My sister always says this man saved her life, tor really she meant to throw herself down the stairs, and the others would have surely followed her. This scare was enough for my tender-hearted mother, so thus ended the factory episode.

Meantime, I had not been idle : I had spent my last cent in advertising for the governess situation, and most of my time in searching the papers and answering any advertisements I thought suitable. No one seemed to want a daily governess in Toronto. There were lots of servants wanted, though, just as there are now; but don’t forget, I was “just out from England” and full of English ideas, or I might easily have got a situation as a nurse, and been better off, and better paid, than as a governess. However, just at this time when money was getting scarce and thing:! looking rather black for us, “Providence opened a door," as dear mother said, and we made a fresh start in another direction.

1 told you we were boarding at the house of a Mrs. Derrigan, but there was also a Mr. Derrfgan, and that’s where the trouble came in. He was fonder of whiskey than either water or tea, and in consequence matrimonial squabbles were not infrequent, and what you might call lively at times.

Mrs. Derrigan, who often confided her troubles to mother, told her one day that at last she had made up her mind to give up housekeeping. She had got sick and tired of these continued outbreaks on Mr. Derrigan’s part, and would return to her friends until he returned to his senses. Now, when my mother heard this she conceived the plan, and bravely made up her mind to execute it, namely, to rent the house herself when Mrs. Derrigan vacated it, and start a boarding-house on her own account. She reasoned it out in this way: If father did go to Muskoka, and take up a government grant of land, it would be some time before he had a clearing made and a house put up on it, and :n the meantime what were we to live on? Whereas, if she started a boarding-house in Toronto, we girls could do the housework, and she could keep us at home under her wing, and yet we should be earning a living. She had seen enough during the few weeks we had boarded with Mrs. Derrigan to convince her that, with proper management, money might be made in a boarding-house; and if we were provided for in this way it would leave my father at liberty to take up the land, and start preparing our future home.

Thus it was settled, and it proved to be a wise move on mother’s part; for though we had our ups and downs, on the whole the venture turned out well—as you will hear.

I think from my present standpoint I can appreciate more than 1 was able to do in the past the fortitude and courage displayed at this time by my dear mother. She perforce of circumstances was compelled to take the helm ;n her own hands, and it was her perseverance and industry that brought our barque safely thro' those troubled seas of difficulty and danger.