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which words sometimes become corrupted. It was originally called the 

 " Corn winning," because it was a feast held by the country people when 

 they had won, or secured their corn crops. It afterwards, came to be 

 called the " Kurn winning," and "Kurn" being the dialect word for 

 churn, it became a custom for each of the family and work-people to be 

 regaled with a basin of cream, as a part of the feast, and thus it became 

 the kuin, or churn supper. 



I will now conclude with a few brief remarks, which have 

 suggested themselves to me while investigating the subject. We 

 are all prone to retrospection. We look back with a sort of fond 

 remembrance to the years of childhood and youth, and affect to lament 

 for the joys which are gone, never to return. This feeling, however, 

 when it comes to be analyzed, and submitted to the test of critical 

 examination, is found to be in a great measure fallacious. If by any 

 possibility we could have the choice, there are probably very few of us 

 who would elect to change the advantage which he has, for the much 

 lauded pleasures of youth. Would any of us be willing to give up the 

 endearments of our homes, our valued friends, the knowledge and experi- 

 ence we have gained in all our battles with the world, and the numerous 

 other blessings we each of us have, for the sake of going back to the 

 frivolous pleasures of childhood and youth, which after all, were not the 

 unalloyed pleasures which we are apt to fancy them, when they are left 

 a few years behind. If we search our memories, we shall find, that we 

 all had our troubles, our crosses, and our disappointments in youth, as 

 well as now, equal perhaps in number, if different in kind ; and if we 

 come to strike the balance, it certainly ought to be in favour of what we 

 are, and not what we were. Now, it is just the same feeling which 

 throws such a halo of romance around what are called the good old 

 times, and it is equally false and fictitious in both cases. If we look 

 back to the old times, by the light of history, we see little but a succession 

 of wars, murders, and religious persecutions, with tyranny and oppression 

 of every kind. We see the mass of the people of this country in a state 

 of serfdom, or semi-slavery, most of them in the most abject poverty, and 

 frequently dying by thousands of small-pox, famine, and the plague. In 



