CHAPTER XVI. 



Canadian Life and Manners. 



The change from England to Canada is one that, 

 as far as personal conditions go, presses more hardly 

 upon women than upon men. In the latter country 

 domestic servants are really scarce; when they are 

 found, they can only be described as pearls of great 

 price. You have to pay them three or four times 

 what you pay a good servant at home. And 

 they are not all good that are obtainable in Canada. 

 Hence you have to adopt the policy of Mother Hub- 

 bard's dog, and do without. 



This means, if you are not near a convenient store, 

 that your wife has to make and bake her own bread, 

 to make her own butter, to do her own washing. 



The Canadian housewife not only makes her own 

 bread ; she stocks her larder with all sorts of preserved 

 fruits — pears, peaches, crab apples, strawberries, 

 cherries, and so forth. These are all preserved in 

 syrup in hermetically-sealed glass jars. She also 

 revels in jellies, chutnees, tomato sauce, piccalillies, 

 and so forth. Jams, the toothsome, old-fashioned, 

 yet ever-welcome jams of her English sister, she " has 

 no use for," as she would say. Evidently the youth- 

 ful Canadian palate is not yet educated to them. Yet 



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