3o6 



LIFE IN MONTREAL. [Chap. VII. 



almost all letters when answered. In these days of cheap 

 postage, I treat correspondence as paper conversation, serving 

 its turn, then done with." 



In a letter to Susan (December 4) he says, " I have no- 

 thing but loving pleasure in every thought of her; and I 

 need not say that such thoughts are, if not uppermost in one's 

 incessant duties, at least always underlying, ready to rise 

 whenever there is an opening. . . . / am like Mary's boys 

 with their ' nasty tempers.' I scarcely seem worthy to be called 

 a brother of such a sweet soul. But then comes always the 

 awful love of the Lord : £ Jesus loves me, even me! Some of 

 the hymns we used to have often at St. James's are constantly 

 rising up to me. ... I continue to be immeasurably more 

 affected by hymns than by sermons ; but I rarely feel any 

 power or pleasure in making music myself, especially since 

 Anna's removal. ... It feels something like life's heart only 

 half pulsing, when one's ministry is ended and one's boy left. 

 It seems as though Minna and I are like old Mr. and Mrs* 

 Wright, just living and working on till the summons come. They 

 called calmly to hold the bright torch ; we to do daily toil. 

 The sweet Anna was both in one. . . . The only thing I feel 

 specially my own is the very poor low work of shell-science. I 

 hardly know who here could finish it, were I taken ; but how 

 insignificant that seems, compared with the humblest work for 

 the soul. Whether any of the teaching-seeds that I scatter 

 over these heedless boys will take root, the Lord only knows." 



He spent his Christmas holidays in work for the Natural 

 History Society in Boston. In Boston more attention is paid 

 to the heating of houses than is usual in England ; but not 

 so much as at Montreal. At Brandon Lodge " we begin to 

 complain of cold if the temperature in any part of the house 

 is below 6o° ; * all fresh and circulating, with no smell in bed- 

 rooms, etc. ; we turn off the bad air through the closet ; so as 



* When it was 24 0 below zero, he says in another letter, the house 

 generally was between 50 0 and 6o° : the rooms as warm as they chose. 

 " Our fuel does not cost us more than that of a house of the same size in 

 England, although it is so much dearer ; because we use all the heat, 

 instead of sending it up the chimney." 



